Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, yesterday I introduced legislation that has been given the number S. 2593, the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2008. I developed this legislation with Senators Domenici and Feinstein, who are cosponsors of the bill. We also have as cosponsors Senators Allard, Wyden, Salazar, Cantwell, Craig, Akaka, and Crapo. I also am pleased to point out that Chairman Grijalva in the House of Representatives is introducing a companion bill, and I look forward to working with him as his subcommittee in the Natural Resources Committee moves forward with that bill.

This legislation establishes a program to select and fund projects that restore forests at a landscape scale through a process that encourages collaboration, relies on the best available science, facilitates local economic development, and leverages local funds with national and private funding. 

As many of my colleagues know, we are facing serious forest health and wildfire challenges throughout our country. A century of over-aggressive fire suppression, logging, and other land uses have significantly deteriorated entire landscapes. 

These conditions have played an important role in the extraordinary wildfires and insect-caused mortality that we have seen literally on millions of acres of national forest and other lands. To address these problems, it is critical that we begin trying to restore our forests on a landscape scale. 

Landscape-scale restoration is key for controlling wildfire suppression costs. It is an important component of successful economic development. It is important for the health of many of our forest ecosystems. 

Despite the importance of landscape-scale restoration, neither the National Fire Plan nor the Healthy Forest Restoration Act nor any of the other efforts we have made to date have been very successful in facilitating restoration and hazardous fuels reduction on landscape scales. A lack of sufficient funding is one of the primary reasons. Restoring landscapes takes a significant amount of funding over a significant period of time. 

To address that problem, the Forest Landscape Restoration Act authorizes $40 million per year for 10 years to be paid into a national pool. Eligible landscape restoration projects from around the country would compete for a portion of that money. Mr. President, $40 million is not nearly enough money to fund landscape-scale treatments in all of the forest landscapes that need restoration, but it is a realistic amount for us to pursue at this time, and it is enough to make landscape-scale restoration a reality. 

Because of funding and other challenges, landscape-scale restoration remains largely theoretical. As a result, this legislation is designed to be both practical and experimental. It does not redirect existing efforts. Instead, it adds to existing efforts by creating a program that will make planning, funding, and carrying out at least a handful of these landscape-scale restoration projects possible. 

Again, I thank Senators Domenici and Feinstein and the other cosponsors of this legislation for working with me on this bill. I also thank the many stakeholders from across the spectrum for their input on the legislation, including the Nature Conservancy which has been very supportive of this effort. 

Mr. President, I yield the floor.