The House Committee on Natural Resources held its first outdoor hearing at Curry Village Amphitheater in Yosemite National Park to discuss wildfires and forest management.
"Just last year, the Mariposa Grove, which we toured this week, was threatened by fire," said Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman. "Firefighters and land managers alike both credited prior treatments such as thinning and prescribed burning as saving the grove. These are the kinds of proactive solutions we must apply to every American forest, and the hearing gave us insight into crafting a path forward."
The House Committee on Natural Resources held its first outdoor hearing at Curry Village Amphitheater in Yosemite National Park on August 13, where Committee Republicans discussed wildfire suppression and forest management strategies. According to the Committee, it has "never been more apparent" that there is a need to escalate active forest management efforts on a larger scale.
As per the Committee's report, research conducted by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) revealed that in the previous year, approximately 36.3 million trees in California died, marking a staggering 282 percent surge from the figures in 2021. In Mariposa County, the specific site of the field hearing, the count of trees lost in the preceding year amounted to nearly 1 million. The Committee also voiced apprehensions regarding the situation at Yosemite National Park, which is hailed as the "crown jewel of America's National Park System," as it finds itself at the center of the wildfire crisis that has been sweeping through California and the Western region. The Committee further highlighted that within the past ten years, the expanse of forestland that has succumbed to wildfires surpasses 72 million acres.
"More than a century of fire suppression and mismanagement has turned our federal forests into powder kegs waiting for a single spark to ignite," Chairman Westerman said. "Perhaps nothing exemplifies our wildfire crisis and the threat to an iconic species more than the loss of 20 percent of the world's Giant Sequoias in just two short years."
Although effective land management plays a pivotal role in reducing the impact of forest fires, the Committee's investigation uncovered significant delays in the actions taken by land managers, attributed to various factors. According to a report referenced by the Committee from the Property and Environment Research Center, the initiation of mechanical treatments requires an average of 3.6 years, while starting a prescribed burn takes around 4.7 years. For instance, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has managed to conduct mechanical treatments on just 2 million acres annually in recent decades. If this pace continues, it would take the agency over three decades to complete the necessary interventions aimed at enhancing the health of its high-risk forest areas.
