Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 5, 2011

CONTACT:  Hannah Loy 202-225-2315

Gosar Testifies in Phoenix regarding the Arizona Wildfires and the Need for Landscape-Scale Forest Restoration Treatment  

Phoenix, AZ –U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar, DDS (AZ-01) testified today at a hearing held by the Arizona House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee on Arizona Forest Restoration Management.  Congressman Gosar spoke on the massive fires that have been raging across Arizona and the American Southwest, and of the need for landscape-scale forest restoration treatments which will mitigate wildfire damage while providing forest jobs, markets for wood products, and ecological restoration.  In addition, the Congressman touched on a variety of other issues that Congress is evaluating—each related to public land and natural resources land management.  Additional testimony submitted by Gosar to the Committee is below:

Arizona House of Representatives

House Ad Hoc Committee on Arizona Forests Restoration Management

Tuesday, July 5, 2011 2:00 P.M.

Testimony of Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S.

Representative for Arizona’s First Congressional District

I would like to thank Co-Chairs Barton and Crandall for holding this hearing on wildfire management and for giving me the opportunity to speak before the committee today. 

First, my thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the people who have suffered from this terrible tragedy.  I would also like to express my most sincere appreciation to all of the men and women working around the clock to protect the lives and property of our neighbors.

The district I represent is one of the largest Congressional districts in the country, encompassing eight of Arizona’s 13 rural counties.  The district contains over 37 million acres of land administered by the federal government, including over nine million acres of United States Forest Service administered lands.  That acreage includes much of Coconino, Apache-Sitgreaves, Tonto, and Kaibab National Forests.

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I sit on the Natural Resources Committee.  One of the many areas that fall under the committee’s jurisdiction is the health of our forest reserves and national parks.  Proper management of our public lands has been one of my top priorities since I first took office a little over six months ago.

This year, our communities have been victims of the largest forest fires in Arizona’s recorded history.   The Wallow Fire on the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona—now the largest wildfire in Arizona history—grew to over a half million acres in just three weeks, charring in its wake some of the most treasured Ponderosa Pine country in the state. 

This fire, however, is not the only one burning in Arizona: the Horseshoe Two Fire, the Murphy Complex, the Stanley Fire and the Monument Fire have already blackened another 200,000+ acres.  These are some of the most beautiful grasslands and rugged mountain ranges in southern and central Arizona.

In total, over a million acres of Forest Service lands have burned in the American Southwest, as well as another 600,000 acres of federal, state, and private lands.  The fires are costing millions of dollars in immediate fire response and will cost many millions more in restoration and rehabilitation in the months and years ahead.

The five largest wildfires, Rodeo in 2002, Cave Creek in 2005, Willow in 2004, Aspen in 2003, and now the current Wallow Fire have all occurred in the last ten years.  Prior to 1990, the largest fire was the Carrizo fire in 1970 which burned just 57,000 acres.  The frequency of fires, and the magnitude of the acreage burned, has exponentially increased since 1990.

I was raised in Pinedale, Wyoming, surrounded by Bridger National Forest, and have lived in Flagstaff, AZ, surrounded by Coconino National Forest, for over 25 years so I understand the need for proper stewardship of our lands.  These fires are showing the rest of the country what we in Arizona have known for years—that our ecosystems are suffocating under too many trees.  Where we once had 10 to 25 trees per acre, we now have hundreds.  Our forests have been mismanaged for a long time and it is way past due to change our strategy.    

I am just as angry and frustrated as you all are, but we have to work together to address this pressing issue facing our state.  It is going to take a strong public-private collaboration in the short- and long-term to ensure that forests in Arizona get to where they need to be.

As the representative from Arizona’s First Congressional District, I would like to briefly touch on the federal role in this mission in the coming years.

The current federal system continues to give funding priority to suppression.  The millions of dollars spent year after year on fire suppression do not reflect the true costs of unnaturally severe wildfires.  Fire suppression costs are only the immediate costs that are the most easily quantifiable and reported to the public.  In the case of the Wallow Fire, suppression has cost nearly $105 million dollars.  The affected communities and the ecosystem itself will experience longer-term impacts which will cost significantly more. 

The Western Forestry Leadership Coalition, a state and federal government partnership, estimates these costs generally amount to 2 to 30 times the reported suppression costs.  For example, the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire’s true total cost was closer to $308 million—15 times the suppression costs.

If we are going to save what is left of our forests, we must change our priorities and aggressively treat our forests at the pace and scale these fires are occurring.  Concurrently, it is vital Congress maintain adequate fire suppression funding in the short-term, as it will take many years to thin all of our state and countries mismanage forests. 

I have toured the affected fire sites throughout state and the images are clear: the areas that were treated as part of the White Mountain Stewardship Project, a contract designed to thin Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and White Mountain Apache Tribal lands, and the areas managed locally by the Apache Tribe and the State of Arizona, were properly cleaned and cleared and therefore still have healthy trees with burned underbrush.  In the lands that were untouched by thinning practices, the majority of the U.S. Forest Service administered land in the state, the fire left only scorched earth behind.

We must resurrect the timber industry to thin millions of acres of badly overgrown Arizona forests.  Commercial logging used to help reduce catastrophic wildfires by thinning the forests, but bureaucratic red tape preventing the private sector from participating in the stewardship of our public lands, combined with the excessive litigation initiated by some extreme environmental groups, has resulted in the loss of Arizona’s timber industry and the jobs provided by the responsible management of our natural resources.  As a result, commercial logging in Arizona and other states has now been reduced to a fraction of what it once was. 

Logging makes the forest healthier, helps protect communities, and jump-starts the local economy by assuring a long-term supply of wood, which invigorates local businesses, creates jobs, and helps the project pay for itself.

It is also important to note that the management of our national forest system lands is a federal responsibility.  While some would like to see this responsibility shift locally, that is unlikely to drastically change in the near future.  Given the current management structures in our state, it is critical the federal government meets its obligations to the people of Arizona and across the country when it comes to public land management.

When the federal government partners with local government, stakeholder groups, and private industry, together they can create much needed jobs and a safer environment for our citizens. 

The White Mountain Project is the first large-scale Forest Service stewardship contract in the nation.  The project is an experiment in collaboration with multiple stakeholders, including the U.S. Forest Service, Future Forest LLC—a local business which was awarded the contract in 2004—community members, and environmental groups to attempt to start this dire forest health issue.  The contract had a goal of treating 150,000 acres of the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest over 10 years.   Over the last seven years, nearly 49,000 acres have been treated.

As we begin to analyze the Wallow Fire aftermath, it is starkly clear that the areas treated under the White Mountain Stewardship Project burned with less intensity, preventing even more damage and saving some communities threatened by the fire.  In the process, it has successfully developed new markets for woody biomass, creating a demand for 15,000 acres per year during one of the most severe economic downturns the wood products industry has seen.  As a result, over 300 Arizonans have been put back to work and the project has generated nearly $700,000 in revenues. 

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done in the White Mountain area.  Since the implementation of stewardship contracting authority, the cost of forest restoration treatments has declined significantly; however, that tool expires in 2013.  What Congress must address is the expiration of the authority in 2013 in a timely manner and address some other hurdles legislatively to continue the progress that has been made thus far.  As the representative of this area in the U.S. House of Representatives, I will fight to ensure the necessary legislative fixes are made and this critical work continues to move forward.  Although the costs of the treatments are still relatively high, when compared to the costs of suppression and the indirect costs of catastrophic wildfire, it is a very small price to pay.  Preventive treatments are exponentially cheaper than post-disaster mitigation.

While the White Mountain Stewardship Project is a step in the right direction, we need to think big.  As I mentioned before, there are millions of acres of Forest Service administered land in Arizona’s First Congressional District alone.  Landscape-scale forest restoration treatments are critical if our state is going to make real progress towards proper forest health.   The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4-FRI) is exactly the type of proposal needed for long-term health of our forests. 

The 4-FRI project has the potential to be the largest and most ambitious restoration effort in the country.  It proposes to restore 2.5 million acres of ponderosa pine forests on the Apache-Sitgraves, Coconino, Kaibab, and Tonto National Forests.  It is unique because it calls for the Forest Service to partner with private industry to restore our forests.  Previous forest striation efforts have relied on the Forest Service to pay for restoration thinning.  In these fiscal times, it is clear we simply cannot afford to restore forests on the scale necessary to prevent unnatural fires like Wallow, Rodeo-Chediski, or Schultz.  4-FRI recognizes that reality and puts forth a proposal that empowers private industry and minimizes the cost to the American taxpayer. 

This first of its kind large-scale treatment in fire-prone areas will reduce damaging wildfire impacts, as well as provide forest jobs, markets for wood products, and ecological restoration.   Because of that promise, it has garnered a wide range of support including my colleagues in the Arizona congressional delegation, Governor Brewer, leaders in the State Legislature, the affected counties and cities in our state, and an unprecedented range of environmental groups and industry partners. 

While it is easy to point fingers about how our forests ended up in their current condition, it is important to put the bickering aside and move forward proactively and constructively together.  Environmentalists, scientists, loggers, and forest managers have worked for years to create the initiative and we are moving on that path towards seeing it come to fruition.  I applaud all the involved parties for the work that has been done thus far. 

I am committed to continuing to work with all relevant parties to ensure this project continues to move forward.  Last month, the Department of Agriculture announced new funding for the initiative and released the “request for proposal,” which lays the ground rules for contractors interested in bidding on the project.  These are just the first steps.  It is going to take continued public-private collaboration in the short- and long-term to ensure that this project is successful.

When all is said and done, I believe 4-FRI will be a national model for landscape-scale restoration.  Building collaborative partnerships maximizes our limited resources to use our forest resources in a sound environmental and economic manner.  I strongly believe that when the federal government partners with local government, stakeholder groups, and private industry, together we will create much-needed jobs and a safer environment for our citizens.

In the short-term, we must look for way to clear some of the salvageable resources affected by the current fires while ensuring that permanent damage is not done to the vulnerable soils on the ground that will be critical to the reforestation of these burned areas. 

Beyond these thinning projects, my colleagues in Congress and I are looking at a wide variety of legislative initiatives that will improve federal law affecting natural resources management.  I am reviewing NEPA regulations and other laws in need of legislative changes to make the process more streamlined, efficient, and fair.  Compliance has become muddled and overly bureaucratic, leading to project-killing delays.  Particularly, as we are considering a first of its kind landscape-scale restoration project like 4-FRI, regulatory streamlining is more critical than ever. 

I am also reviewing legislative proposals that would cap legal fees paid to environmental groups that sue government agencies.  Believe it or not, environmental groups sue federal agencies, tie up the process for years, and then submit a bill to the taxpayers who end up paying under the somewhat misnamed Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA).  I am a cosponsor of Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming’s legislation, H.R. 1996, the “Government Litigation Savings Act,” which is the first step in reforming that law.  This legislation would put a halt to the abuses of deep-pocketed environmental groups by reinstating tracking and reporting requirements as well as instituting targeted reforms to EAJA that will reduce the taxpayer’s burden to pay for attorney’s fees.  At the same time, the bill returns EAJA to the original intent of Congress to help individuals and small businesses during a once-in-a-lifetime need to battle the federal government in court.  Veterans and Social Security claimants will still be able to access federal funds through EAJA.

These are just a few of the items Congress is looking at.  Our forest and natural resources are a way of life in Arizona.  I remain saddened by what has happened to my constituents that have been adversely affected by this fire.  We can resolve to keep this from happening again.  I, like most of you, embrace my stewardship with nature, but that stewardship should include private sector solutions that use the natural resources of our forests in a way that maintains their beauty and vitality.  I think if we look forward and work collaboratively, we can address the desperate forest maintenance crisis and other natural resources-related issues facing our state. 

Thank you again for this opportunity. 

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