Walden Op-Ed

What with all the forest fires that have been raging throughout the West along with a story I recently did on the cost of fighting forest fires I thought I would read you an OP-ED COLUMN:

"Time for the Senate to act on wildfire prevention bill"

 

by Rep. Greg Walden

Around Oregon and throughout the West, another fire season is well underway. Overstocked, diseased, and bug-infested forests are at risk of the massive and catastrophic wildfires that clog our air with smoke and threaten our streams. All this while our mills are starving for a reliable supply of timber and people need jobs. It's clear the status quo isn't working for our forests, our communities, or our environment. We can do better.

The U.S. House has passed a bipartisan bill—the Resilient Federal Forests Act— that would help reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires and bring active management back to our federal forests.  Through active management, we can clean up our forests, prevent these unnaturally large fires, protect our air, and put people back to work in our forested communities.

Our bill puts into place much needed reforms to federal forest policy. For example, the bill repeals the arbitrary and outdated prohibition on harvesting trees over 21 inches in diameter on national forests in eastern Oregon. "Temporarily" put in place in 1997, this rule still hasn't been removed 20 years later! This flawed, one-size-fits-all rule illustrates just how broken federal forest management has become. The restriction greatly limits forest managers' ability to address site specific needs of the forest on the ground and has only served to further tie up projects in endless appeals and litigation.