Agriculture Panel to Vote on Emergency Wildlife & Forest Management Act

FORESTS: Agriculture panel to vote on wildfire legislation

Source: Energy & Environment Daily
Published: Monday, September 12, 2016

The Senate Agriculture Committee will take up wildfire legislation this week, as a disagreement over committee jurisdiction on the issue continues to play out.

The Agriculture panel will vote on a measure from Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the “Emergency Wildfire and Forest Management Act,” which would remove regulatory hurdles for forest-thinning projects aimed at reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

Roberts released the updated legislation Friday. It is modeled after the “Resilient Federal Forests Act,” H.R. 2647, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), which passed the House last year.

The measures are in response to the climbing costs of wildfires in the West and what many see as overgrown forests that are prone to catastrophic fire.

Lawmakers broadly agree that Congress needs to step in, but they are split on how far to stretch environmental regulations and how to end the Forest Service’s practice of borrowing from non-fire accounts.

A turf battle may be at play in the Senate, as well.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is pushing her own broader proposal on the issue. It also includes a spending cap adjustment for wildfires to prevent borrowing. Adraft bill she released in May would base the cap on a 10-year rolling average of wildfire costs.

Roberts has said the Agriculture Committee has a role. A committee news release Friday announcing his legislation acknowledged the jurisdictional lines, saying matters such as borrowing would be determined by the committee of jurisdiction in consultation with his.

A spokesman for Energy and Natural Resources declined to comment on the Agriculture panel’s action or on any coordination Roberts and Murkowski may be exploring.

Roberts’ bill provides for expedited environmental assessments of forest management projects aimed at preventing wildfires, including restricting environmental impact statements to two alternatives: either taking no action or the project as proposed.

His measure would provide categorical exclusions from the National Environmental Policy Act for several forest management practices, including response to insect infestations and disease, and for salvage operations after catastrophic events. The categorical exclusions would be limited to areas of no more than 3,000 acres.

The measure also proposes an arbitration process as an alternative to federal courts for resolving disputes about forest management projects. The alternative dispute resolution, a pilot program, would be limited to no more than 10 projects a year and would expire in 2018.

Environmental groups have said both the Roberts and Murkowski approaches lift too many protections in the interests of logging.

The Roberts measure overlooks the environmental benefits of natural wildfire in backcountry areas and is based on fire hyperbole, said Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore.

“What we and other scientists have been calling for is a rationale wildfire policy based on sound science, cost containment of runaway fire suppression costs resulting from attempting to put out backcountry fires under extreme conditions, and support for homeowners to take life-saving precautions so that wildfires can perform their vital ecosystem functions safely in the backcountry,” DellaSala said in an email.

Schedule: The markup is Tuesday, Sept. 13, at 10 a.m. in 328-A Russell.

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