Kurt's Work

The House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing today titled “Exploring Solutions to Reduce Risks of Catastrophic Wildfire and Improve Resiliency of National Forests,” focused on finding solutions to reduce fire suppression costs along with the need to improve forest management practices. Since coming into federal office, Congressman Kurt Schrader (OR-5) has made a priority of working to fix our broken forest management system and the resulting destruction from preventable wildfires.

“I thank Chairman Bishop and the Nature Resources Committee for holding this hearing today and giving serious thought and consideration to the problems we’ve been fighting to fix for years to prevent these natural disasters in the west,” said Rep. Schrader.  “While the southeast captured the national attention this summer with massive hurricanes and tropical storms, out west we’ve witnessed one of the worst wildfire seasons in history. Because of the way we currently budget, USFS and BLM are forced to exhaust over half their funds on fighting fires rather than on preventing them. The system is broken.  We need forest management reforms and we need them now. Mismanagement has left our forests susceptible to insects and disease and ripe for catastrophic wildfires. We need to fix the way we manage our forests so that we’re curbing the cost and destruction of these fires each year rather than remaining in this endless loop of catch-up. I hope we can continue this bipartisan conversation and make real changes to finally put an end to this vicious cycle.”

[VIDEO]: In response to the Eagle Creek fire in Portland this month, Congressman Schrader took to the House floor to call for better forest management.

Earlier this year, the Congressman reintroduced his bipartisan Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, alongside Congressman Mike Simpson (R-ID), to fix the current budgeting process for wildfires. In recent years, Congress has budgeted for wildfire suppression by appropriating money according to the average cost for wildfires over the past ten years, known as the “ten-year average.”  When costs exceed an agency’s fire budget, that agency is forced to borrow from non-fire accounts to pay for fire suppression. This practice is known as “fire-borrowing.” Fire borrowing was intended to be an extraordinary measure to help in bad wildfire years. However, this practice has become the norm and not the exception, which has caused wildfire costs to increase. According to the Forest Service, wildfire costs were 56% of their total budget in 2016. In 1995, the Forest Service spent only 16% of their total budget fighting wildfires. By 2025, that number could increase to nearly 70% if nothing is done to fix the budgeting process. The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act would end fire borrowing by treating wildfires like other natural disasters when wildfire suppression costs are exhausted.

And in June, Congressman Schrader’s bipartisan bill to provide utility companies the ability to rapidly remove hazardous vegetation by receiving pre-approval from the Forest Service passed overwhelmingly in the House. Under current law, even where trees, plants and other vegetation are already in contact with electric transmission lines, it can take months for Forest Service to approve the remove of the hazardous vegetation from the transmission lines rights of way. This creates a dangerous environment, significantly increasing the likelihood of blackouts and forest fires. Congressman Schrader bill, which initially passed out of the Natural Resources Committee, will streamline the removal of these hazardous plants, decreasing the likelihood of forest fires.