Over the past 30 years, shrub and grass fires have burned many more acres and destroyed more property in the West than wildfires, and the same was true this season.

Still, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives — including Oregon’s two Republican representatives — hope that Congress will pass a bill before the end of the year that would combat wildfires increasingly important in the West by reducing environmental regulations to make it easier to fell and cut vegetation in federal forests. , which represent more than 60% of Oregon’s forests.

Proposed by Arkansas Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman and California Democratic Rep. Scott Peters, the “Fix Our Forests Act” passed the House of Representatives on September 24 with 268 representatives in favor and 151 against, including all four Reps. Oregon Democrats. It is expected to be voted on in the U.S. Senate after the November general election, according to Hank Stern, a spokesman for Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat.

Supporters say the bill would restore forest health, increase resilience to catastrophic wildfires and protect communities by speeding up environmental analyzes while reducing frivolous lawsuits and scaling up restoration projects. But opponents, including environmentalists and Democrats, say it would open millions of acres of federal land to logging without scientific review or community input, potentially increasing the risk of wildfires while repealing regulations to protect endangered and threatened species.

To counter the bill, Democratic members of the Oregon House and Senate are introducing a bill that would direct federal investments toward preparing communities and strengthening homes.

The Biden administration also opposed the bill and issued a statement a day before the House vote, saying it contains “a number of provisions that would undermine fundamental protections for communities, lands, waters and wildlife. More than 85 environmental groups also submitted a letter to the House Natural Resources Committee opposing the bill.

The bill adds to calls in Oregon by House Republicans to roll back restrictions on logging in public and private forests. Three prominent state lawmakers recently called on their peers in the state Legislature to reform forest management and logging policies that they say would prevent large fires from starting and spreading.

More than 2,000 wildfires in Oregon this season have burned a record about 2 million acres — and not largely in forests. According to the Wildland Mapping Institute, about 75 percent of the acres burned were grass and brush, mostly in eastern Oregon.

Forest plan

The bill would foster greater collaboration on wildfire preparedness and response among local, state, federal, and tribal agencies, and allow greater investment in new technologies intended to improve information sharing on fire risks, including at the level of individual properties. But one of the cornerstones of the bill is to speed up and bypass certain environmental studies that now must be done before federal agencies approve areas for post-fire logging, pre-fire logging or “thinning” – which involves hiring logging companies to cut down trees that may be damaged. dry fuel for a fire, but also generally requires that they obtain marketable lumber through the deal – or burning, on federal lands.

This would allow 10,000-acre tracts of forest to waive federally required environmental reviews, including site-specific review of potential impacts on threatened or endangered species, before logging takes place . Currently, only windrows up to 3,000 acres can be exempt from reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

Supporters of the Fix Our Forests Act say it would speed up burdensome environmental studies that have prevented the U.S. Forest Service and Department of the Interior from launching projects that would reduce fire-fueling vegetation on the landscape.

In a statement explaining her support for the bill, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Republican representing Oregon’s 5th Congressional District which includes Linn County, parts of Multnomah and Marion counties and most of Clackamas and Deschutes, said the law would help prevent another bill. a record forest fire season like this summer.

“This is a comprehensive proposal that would improve forest management in areas most at risk of wildfires using advanced science and technology. Providing necessary resources to those affected and working to prevent wildfires from breaking out will remain top priorities,” she said in the release.

A summary of the bill shared by Chavez-DeRemer describes millions of acres of federal forests as “overgrown” and in need of large-scale intervention.

Democratic alternatives

But opponents of the bill say that in many high-fire-risk landscapes, logging can contribute to forests drying out, further perpetuating fires. Researchers found that unless thinning is targeted around high-risk communities to prevent homes and buildings from burning, thinning forest areas far from residents and infrastructure is costly and does not has little benefit.

A multi-year study of forest treatments such as commercial thinning and prescribed burns in Western states found that wildfires occur in only about 1% of treated forests, and they are largely ineffective because these treatments do not only last about 10 to 20 years before the vegetation grows back. . Studies have shown that thinning and prescribed burning around homes and towns can be effective in preventing wildfires from spreading quickly through communities.

U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat representing Oregon’s 6th District in the heart of the Willamette Valley, is co-sponsoring a bill called the “Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act” that would invest in strengthening communities and homes , landscape resilience to wildfires and community preparedness plans. And in the U.S. Senate, Oregon’s Wyden is drafting a similar bill called the Wildfire Safe Communities Act of 2024.

Wyden said in an email that the Fix Our Forests Act would make federal forest management more controversial and less successful.

“The bill undermines basic environmental laws and would allow large, poorly designed commercial projects that threaten communities’ drinking water, wildlife and recreational opportunities to proceed without an inadequate environmental review,” Wyden said.

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