Federal Forest Reform Legislation

Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), the only forester in Congress, is once again
leading efforts in the House to enact needed reforms to the way our federal
forest holdings are managed. The Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017
(H.R. 2936 or RFFA) was introduced June 20 and has already been approved by the House Natural Resources Committee. Because the bill is wide ranging, it was referred to several committees in the House, including the House Agriculture Committee. We are hearing that leadership on House Ag would like to mark the legislation up before it receives House floor consideration.

Like its predecessor in the last Congress, which passed the House, the RFFA of 2017 would provide a number of new tools for the Forest Service to execute on its mission. Primary among these tools are new authorities that would allow for expedited environmental reviews of proposed forest thinning and other critical forest landscape work. One of the time consuming exercises that must precede any forest management work on federal lands before moving forward is conducting environmental assessments of the project to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA. The last Farm Bill authorized "categorical exclusions" from these NEPA review requirements as long as certain conditions were satisfied. The RFFA from last Congress included a number of CEs that were capped at 5,000 acres.The new version of the bill doubles that cap to 10,000 acres. Similarly, the bill authorizes the Forest Service to speed up salvage harvesting and reforestation following "catastrophic events," which the bill defines to include fire, ice storms and wind events. The legislation requires the Forest Service to reforest 75 percent of the impacted acres, and prevents restraining orders, injunctions or other stays on proposed salvage projects.

The new RFFA also creates a pilot program to resolve legal challenges
against forest management activities through binding arbitration, providing
outside organizations the opportunity to offer an alternative to the challenged activity to be weighed against the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management proposal by an independent arbitrator. The old bill
included a bonding requirement for those filing actions to stop forest
management projects. The bonding provision drew opposition in the Senate
and the new version was retooled to instead provide an arbitrations process
to address those concerns.

Regarding the wildfire crisis that is consuming over half the Forest Service
budget every year, the bill would allow for wildfires to be declared "disasters" and therefore eligible to receive support from existing disaster relief funds under the Stafford Act. Doing so would end the fire borrowing that occurs each year within Forest Service accounts that has crippled the Service's ability to deliver on key objectives, including forest management. We will keep you apprised of developments on this effort.

Appropriations/Biomass

The House Appropriations Committee approved legislation this week which
funds EPA, the Department of Interior and other related agencies. Overall,
the bill cuts funding for EPA by about $500 million. However, within the
bill's 142 pages is a provision directing almost $400 million for hazardous
fuels management activity on Federal lands. And the language goes on to
specify that $15 million of this amount be used for creating incentives for
biomass energy derived from these federal forest land holdings. The bill also includes a carbon neutrality provision similar to what was passed earlier this year in an omnibus package. 

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