Senator Marshall: Active Management is Key to Wildfire Prevention

Senator Marshall Questions Witnesses at Senate Ag Committee Hearing

Washington - On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), questioned U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz during a Senate Agriculture Committee oversight hearing focused on the agency's management of national forests and grasslands.

Senator Marshall highlighted the importance of active land management - including grazing, prescribed burns, and vegetation reduction - to reduce fuel loads and mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires, particularly at the Cimarron National Grassland in Kansas.

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Highlights from the hearing include:

Senator Marshall: "Well, thank you, Chairman. Welcome, Chief Schultz, to the hearing. Glad you're here. I just want to remind everybody that the terms Kansasand forestare oxymorons. We get to examine the beauty of nature one tree at a time. You know, do you know what we call three trees on a quarter section of land in Kansas? A forest. Now, all that being said, the Cimarron National Grassland is something near and dear to my heart and is under your purview. I was out there not too long ago, and, by the way, longtime District Ranger Nancy Brewer gave me an incredible tour. What a wonderful, committed ranger we have there. But that same day, the wind was literally blowing 40 miles an hour - not gusts of 40, I mean, that was the baseline: 40 miles an hour. And as we were leaving, she said, "My gosh, I sure hope we don't have any fires today. It's a bad day." And sure enough, we weren't 30 minutes out of the grasslands before there was a huge fire. It turned out to be 280,000 acres, but fortunately, it was east of those grasslands. So, look, just speak specifically to that grassland and forest management - or grassland management, in this particular case - and what can be done to decrease the chances of losing all of that, if you could."

Chief Schultz: "In my opening statement, I talked about active management, and active management is not just forest management - it's also range management and managing grasslands. We have 20 national grasslands, and the Cimarron National Grassland is one of those. So, active management is key to reducing fuels and fine fuels on the landscape. That means making sure that we have active permittees out there because, as you know, the Forest Service doesn't have staff all over the place. So, in many cases, it's the permittees who are going to see issues first - whether there's a wildfire issue, an insect or disease issue, or an invasive species issue. The permittees are going to see those things, let us know, and they are the front line of defense in most cases when it comes to making sure management occurs. So, we work with our permittees a lot."

Senator Marshall: "What that means to me is their active grazing is a good thing."

Chief Schultz: "It's absolutely a good thing."

Senator Marshall: "And some prescribed burns are a good thing as well. I would still encourage you to think about what types of buffers you could put in there - around, between, or wherever appropriate - to break it up somehow. Certainly, when you took this job on, I thought one of the biggest challenges was the lack of management of our forests over the past decade or two, and that's a big reason these fires get out of control. Can you tell me what type of progress you're making on actively managing our forests to help prevent some of these huge, huge fires?"

Chief Schultz: "Yes, so active management is a broad thing. So, it's - we've highlighted the importance of grazing. We've actually worked with permittees to increase grazing on the landscape and do it in a way that's consistent with our forest plans. We've also looked at our timber sale program. We've increased our timber sale sales that we're selling. We're going to increase that I mentioned in my statement up to about 4 billion board feet over the next three years, we're seeing about a 10 to 15% increase every year, and that's going to continue to increase terms of the fuels program. We actually treated more acres prescribed fire this past season than we have over the last year as well by about an additional 500,000 acres."

Senator Marshall: "Is that a 5% increase or a 2%?"

Chief Schultz: "In terms of year over year, we're probably at about a 40 percent increase over last year."

Senator Marshall: "What has that allowed you to do?"

Chief Schultz: "So, it varies. When you use prescribed fire, it depends on where you're doing it and how much work you're able to accomplish. Region Eight, which is the Southern Region of the Forest Service - basically from Texas across to Georgia and South Carolina, including Kentucky and Tennessee - is a good example. If we can get out there early in the season and get fire on the landscape, it allows us to treat a lot of acres, so we can get more work done. This year, we were able to accomplish more work early in the season given the fire conditions. Right now, using prescribed fire in the West doesn't make much sense. The conditions are so dry and hot. So, we've actually gotten ahead of our fuels program this year compared to where we were the prior year, based on getting folks out on the ground and making that work a priority. Those are some of the things we've done. But in terms of overall management, we've increased our forest management, increased our grazing management, and increased our fuels treatments. Those are the key focus areas we have. And then, on the fire side, in terms of aggressive initial attack, I mentioned that last season we had 12 percent more starts than we typically see based on a 10-year average, yet we burned half as many acres of Forest Service land. So, it's about being safe, being aggressive in our initial attack, and also being aggressive in how we treat the landscape through fuels treatments and timber sales."

Senator Marshall: "Yeah, I want to point out that certainly we're all concerned about the cost of housing, and we're hopeful that by allowing our forests to be harvested appropriately - and, of course, replenished - we can help bring down the cost of lumber as well. Just briefly, what is keeping you from doing more forest management, or what do you need from us to enable you to do even more?"

Chief Schultz: "The question was asked previously about FOFA. We believe that is a strong provision you could support through passage of FOFA, the Fix Our Forests Act, which would provide us with additional tools to get more work done on the ground. So, in the short term, that's probably the biggest impact you could have, sir."

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