Daines Addresses Increased Risk of Catastrophic Wildfires at Senate Hearing Today
Highlights the need for proper forest management
By Denise Rivette
Montana’s U.S. Senator Steve Daines spoke today at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing and highlighted the increased danger of wildfires and need for proper forest management. The following is a transcript and video of his remarks:
“For the past decade, the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior have moved from talking about fire seasons now to fire years. Wildfires are starting earlier, they're ending later, and are larger, they're hotter, and they're more devastating than what we've seen in the past. Fuel loads on our public lands are at all-time highs. Needed on the ground timber harvests and thinning work has been stalled by litigation, leaving our forests very vulnerable to wildfire. Drought, insects, disease have turned these overstocked forests into tinderboxes that are just waiting to burn. In the summertime in Montana, when we have these longer fire seasons, it’s quite common when we have visitors that come to our great state in the summer that I have to show them pictures of the mountains because you can’t see 'em because of the skies filled with smoke.”
Video of Senator Steve Daines ‘ remarks
“The Forest Service 10-year wildfire crisis strategy aims to treat 50 million acres of federal, state and private lands, but this is only a start to the critical management work that we need done. Over 100 million acres of federal lands alone that are at elevated risk of catastrophic wildfires. This risk is highlighted by the wildfires currently burning across the southern part of our country. To date, 1.4 million acres have burned. The 10-year average in this same time frame as just over 185,000 acres burned, so we're already seeing nearly 10 times the average destruction.”
At the hearing, Daines also called for passage of his bill to fix the what he refers to as the “disastrous 9th Circuit Cottonwood decision”. The bill is intended to increase common sense forest management practices and passed out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in May 2023 with strong bipartisan support.