71st OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--2001 Regular Session
NOTE: Matter within { + braces and plus signs + } in an
amended section is new. Matter within { - braces and minus
signs - } is existing law to be omitted. New sections are within
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LC 2439
A-Engrossed
House Joint Memorial 22
Ordered by the House April 18
Including House Amendments dated April 18
Sponsored by Representative KROPF
SUMMARY
The following summary is not prepared by the sponsors of the
measure and is not a part of the body thereof subject to
consideration by the Legislative Assembly. It is an editor's
brief statement of the essential features of the measure.
Requests United States Forest Service and other federal land
management agencies to implement cohesive forest management
strategy to reduce factors leading to catastrophic wildfires.
Requests United States Department of Interior and United States
Department of Agriculture to draft national prescribed fire
strategy for public lands.
JOINT MEMORIAL
To the President of the United States and the Senate and the
House of Representatives of the United States of America, in
Congress assembled:
We, your memorialists, the Seventy-first Legislative Assembly
of the State of Oregon, in legislative session assembled,
respectfully represent as follows:
Whereas the April 1999 General Accounting Office report '
Western National Forests: A Cohesive Strategy is Needed to
Address Catastrophic Wildfire Threats' states that 'the most
extensive and serious problem related to the health of national
forests in the interior West is the overaccumulation of
vegetation, which has caused an increasing number of large,
intense, uncontrollable, and catastrophically destructive
wildfires'; and
Whereas the December 1999 United States Forest Service report '
Protecting People and Sustaining Resources in Fire-Adapted
Ecosystems: A Cohesive Strategy' confirms the General Accounting
Office's conclusion and warns of a higher risk of damage to the
environment and losses to natural resources and private property
if fuels continue to accumulate, and the report also concludes
that low intensity fire is ecologically beneficial and has a
positive effect on biodiversity, soil productivity and water
quality; and
Whereas the United States Forest Service further acknowledges
that 39 million acres of national forest are at significant risk
of catastrophic wildfire and an additional 26 million acres will
be at similar risk due to increases in the mortality of trees and
brush caused by insects and disease; and
Whereas the National Research Council and the Federal Emergency
Management Agency recognized catastrophic wildfires such as those
in California in 1993 and in Florida in 1998 as being among the
definitive natural disasters of the 1990s; and
Whereas catastrophic wildfires and out of control ' controlled
fires' risk the lives of firefighters and threaten human health,
personal property, sustainable ecosystems, air quality and water
quality; and
Whereas according to the National Fire Protection Association,
wildland-urban interface catastrophic wildfires from 1985 to 1994
destroyed 9,925 homes and in 1999 alone burned six million acres
of public lands nationwide, equivalent to a 1.5-mile swath from
Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles and back; and
Whereas the escaped Cerro Grande Prescribed Fire in May 2000
that consumed over 45,000 acres and destroyed 400 homes with
losses exceeding $1 billion in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the
escaped Lowden Ranch Prescribed Fire in July 1999 that destroyed
23 homes in Lewiston, California, highlight the unacceptable
risks of using prescribed burning as the sole forest management
practice of federal land management agencies; and
Whereas accumulated high-risk forest fuel, reduced fire
response capability by federal agencies during the 1990s and
impaired ability to practice a variety of sound, multiple use
forest management practices have resulted in catastrophic
wildfires that are more difficult and expensive to extinguish; a
disproportionate burden is placed on state and local resources
whose primary responsibility is to protect private lands; costs
to fight these federally managed fires on public land have
increased 150 percent between 1986 and 1994; and the costs of a
reduced readiness force have increased by 70 percent between 1992
and 1997 while capabilities have decreased; and
Whereas current planning efforts of the United States Forest
Service, including the Sierra Nevada Framework, the Interior
Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, the Roadless
Initiative and the federal monument proclamations, rely primarily
on extensive use of prescribed fire, and prescribed fire further
exacerbates the risk of catastrophic wildfire on western public
lands; now, therefore,
Be It Resolved by the Legislative Assembly of the State of
Oregon:
That in the interest of protecting the integrity and posterity
of the nation's public lands, wildlife habitat, watershed health,
air quality, private property and human health and safety, the
United States Forest Service and other federal land management
agencies are respectfully requested to immediately implement an
effective, cohesive fuels treatment strategy to reduce the
overabundance of forest fuels that create the high risk of
catastrophic wildfire on western public lands. Given the long
term nature of the resource, the strategy should be designed to
transcend a number of administrations; and be it further
Resolved, That the agencies use an appropriate mix of fire
suppression activities and forest management methodologies,
including but not limited to selective forest thinning, selective
harvesting and grazing, the removal of excessive ground fuels and
the use of small-scale prescribed burns. Federal agencies should
also increase private, local and state contracts for pre-fire
treatments on federal public lands. Federal agencies should
pursue more effective fire suppression on public lands through
increased funding of mutual aid agreements with professional
state and local public firefighting agencies; and be it further
Resolved, That, in the interest of forest protection and rural
community safety, the United States Department of the Interior
and United States Department of Agriculture immediately draft for
public review and adoption a national prescribed fire strategy
for public lands that creates a process for evaluation of
worst-case scenarios for risk of escape and identifies acceptable
alternatives that will achieve land management objectives and
minimize the risks to resources and to both public and private
property with the use of prescribed fire and that is incorporated
into any regulatory land use planning program that proposes the
use of prescribed fire as the preferred management option; and be
it further
Resolved, That a copy of this memorial shall be sent to the
President of the United States, the Vice President of the United
States, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of
Agriculture, the Chief of the United States Forest Service, the
Director of the National Park Service, the Director of the Bureau
of Land Management and each member of the Oregon Congressional
Delegation.
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