Oregon Senators Divided Over Bill Proposing Increased Logging To Curb Wildfires

Despite shrub and grass fires being the greater cause of destruction in the West than forest fires for the last three decades, Republicans in the U.S.

House want Congress to pass a bill scaling back environmental regulations to enable increased cutting and logging, including in federal forests. The proposal sharply highlights partisan differences as Democratic Senators oppose the move.

Increased Logging Legislation Proposed

Republicans in the U.S. House, including Oregon’s two Republican representatives,  are proposing legislation that will make it easier to cut and log in federal forests. In Oregon, 60% of forests are situated on federal land.  Proposed by Arkansas Republican Rep.

Bruce Westerman and California Democrat Rep. Scott Peters under the title, “Fix Our Forests Act,” 268 representatives voted in favor of the Act and 151 against in the U.S. House on Sept. 24. Oregon’s four Democratic representatives opposed the bill which is now headed to the Senate for debate after the November general election.

Arguing that the bill would restore forest health, increase resiliency to catastrophic wildfires, and protect communities, proponents have faced opposition from Democrats and environmentalists who said the act would open millions of acres of federal land to logging without scientific review or community input.

The potential effects include increasing the risk of wildfires and rolling back regulations that currently protect endangered and threatened species.

Three prominent Republican state lawmakers say the reforms would prevent large fires from starting and spreading. And promote more collaboration on wildfire preparedness and response among local, state, federal, and tribal agencies. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican representing Oregon’s 5th Congressional District said the act would help prevent another record wildfire season similar to the one this summer.

The bill would allow 10,000-acre swaths of forest to circumvent federally required environmental reviews that cover site-specific reviews of the possible effects on threatened or endangered species before logging takes place. The National Environmental Policy Act only exempts 3,000-acre swathes of land to be exempted.

Increased Logging Legislation Opposed

The Wildland Mapping Institute indicated that over 2,000 wildfires in Oregon burned a record 2 million acres this season but about 75% of those acres were not in forests.

Oregon’s Democratic House and Senate members will introduce legislation that would direct federal investments in community preparedness and home hardening to counteract the “Fix our Forests” bill.

Over 85 environmental groups submitted a letter to the House Committee on Natural Resources opposing the bill. The Biden administration also opposes the bill and indicated that it contains several provisions that would undermine basic protections for communities, lands, waters, and wildlife.”

Democrats say that logging can contribute to the drying out of forests- further perpetuating fires, and putting many landscapes at high risk of fire.

According to researchers, unless thinning is targeted around communities at high risk to prevent homes and buildings from burning, the cost of thinning forest tracts far from people and infrastructure has little beneficial return.

Forest treatments such as commercial thinning and prescribed fire across Western states were found in a multi-year study to affect only about 1% of treated forests, and it was found to be largely ineffective as vegetation grows back within 10 to 20 years.

Still, thinning and prescribed burning around homes and cities have been shown to keep wildfires from moving quickly into communities.

A bill named the “Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act” is being co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat representing Oregon’s 6th District in the Willamette Valley.

The bill proposes investment into the community, home hardening, landscape resiliency to wildfire, and community preparedness plans.

Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat. is drafting a similar bill, named called the “Wildfire Safe Communities Act.“ Wyden said that the Fix Our Forests Act would make federal forest management more controversial and less successful.