Forest and Rangeland Health | Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act | Petrified Forest National Park Expansion | Yavapai Land Exchange | Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program Act | Sierra Vista Subwatershed Feasibility Study Act | Other Environmental Initiatives
I believe in the prudent use of our natural resources; the thoughtful conservation of our historic, cultural, and natural treasures; the conservation of scarce water supplies; and the restoration of forest health. By putting these principles into practice, we can protect Arizona’s environment and improve our quality of life.
One of my top priorities continues to be restoring the health of Arizona’s forests, which include the largest stands of ponderosa pine in the world.
Wildfire Prevention and Recovery
The 2011 fire season will go down as the worst in our state’s recorded history. Multiple mega-fires raged throughout Arizona, prompting evacuations and destroying treasured landscapes and homes. The Wallow Fire that burned in the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona surpassed the Rodeo-Chediski fire of 2002 as the state’s largest fire, burning 538,000 acres (over 841 square miles) and destroying 32 homes. The Horseshoe 2, Monument, and Murphy Fires blackened another 300,000 acres in the southern part of the state and destroyed more than 60 homes.
Decades of unwise forest management have produced today’s unhealthy, congested forest conditions that create a massive wildfire fuel problem, causing the mega-fires we have witnessed over the last decade. The sad thing is that we have known for a long-time how to fix this – we must treat the forests with a combination of thinning and prescribed burning to remove the fuel that has built up over the years. Yet, the number of acres we are treating each year is just a fraction of the acres consumed by fire each season.
Bureaucratic regulations, onerous environmental requirements, and lawsuits by self-proclaimed environmental groups have all played a part in preventing us from accomplishing the task at hand. In addition, the federal funding priority is typically firefighting, not preventive forest treatment to avoid fires in the first place. We need to work to change that. The costs of fighting the fires and reconstruction afterward far exceed preventative expenses. Moreover, we know forest treatments also increase firefighting safety and effectiveness, improve recovery time, and contribute to ecosystem functionality – before, during, and after a fire. It’s like any other medical situation: Prevention will save a lot of money in the long run, but it does require an upfront commitment.
In June 2011, I testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about the wildfire problem, as well as the need to aggressively treat our forests at the pace and scale these fires are occurring (you can view video of my remarks here).
The White Mountain Stewardship Contract is an example of what we can accomplish. It has treated 49,000 acres in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, and those treatments are credited with saving the communities of Alpine, Nutrioso, and Greer during the Wallow Fire. The contract also helped build back a local wood utilization industry in the region and bring down the costs of treatments. We are building on these successes and the successes elsewhere across the state to move into even larger landscapes.
We need to think on a scale of treating 500,000 to a million or more acres at a time, and doing programmatic environmental reviews at that scale too. That’s never been done before, but Arizona is ready now with such measures as the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI). The 4FRI is an outgrowth of nearly a decade of collaborative efforts and analyses focused on accelerating forest restoration in northern Arizona. It is rooted in the need to accelerate forest recovery and to shift restoration and management efforts from a short-term, project-by-project basis to an integrated, landscape-scale program. The goal is to strategically treat about a million acres across four national forests in Northern Arizona over the next 20 years.
Stewardship Contracting
Congress provided the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management with stewardship contracting authority in order to promote a closer working relationship with local communities and private industry, and to accomplish a broad range of activities, including forest restoration, that improve land conditions. Stewardship authority allows contracts for as long as 10 years, so that agencies and communities can create long-term plans to restore large landscapes that contribute to the development of sustainable forest communities.
In fact, stewardship contracts are already yielding significant results in the White Mountains of Arizona. In 2004, the Forest Service awarded the 10-year White Mountain Stewardship contract to Future Forest LLC, a partnership of local businesses. That contract was designed to restore forest health, support local economies, and encourage investment in biomass utilization by focusing on the ecological needs of the area and guaranteeing a supply of wood to the contractor for the duration of the contract term.
Since the implementation of stewardship contracting authority, the cost of forest restoration treatments has declined significantly, from $1,100 per acre to approximately $550 per acre, and treatments of larger areas are now possible. Additionally, annual economic assessments demonstrate that the commercial utilization of the woody biomass that is generated from the forest treatments is having a positive effect on the White Mountains region, supporting dozens of businesses and hundreds of local full-time jobs. To learn more about the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, click here.
Although the use of this tool is expanding around the country and projects are yielding measurable ecological, economic, and social benefits, many hurdles remain. The most immediate issue Congress must address is the expiration of the authority in 2013. Without this tool, it will be very difficult to continue the needed removal of small diameter trees of low commercial value from our national forests and public lands. I am working to ensure that this vital program is reauthorized beyond 2013.
Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program
In 2009, Congress approved legislation that established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) program, which is designed to encourage collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration. The new law also authorized the creation of a national fund to supplement local resources and leverage non-federal support to make large-scale, long-term forest restoration projects feasible.
I supported the creation of the CFLR program and I joined other senators in persuading the Obama Administration to fully fund it; the president’s budget for 2013 includes the full $40 million authorization necessary for CFLR. To learn more about the program, including how to submit proposals for funding, click here.
The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) in Arizona competed for CFLR funding, and, to date, has received more than $4 million. Most recently, 4FRI was selected as a pilot project for the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Pilot Program. The selection will allow 4FRI to serve as a national model for collaborative NEPA planning at the landscape scale. To learn more about the 4FRI, click here.
The Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act, which I sponsored and which became law in 2004, created three institutes to promote the use of adaptive ecosystem management techniques, and to work with land managers to design and implement science-based forest-restoration treatments. That measure is helping to produce the science that will allow for effective restoration using the applied research approach employed at the Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI) at Northern Arizona University. The three institutes have proven to be the only current entities with the capacity or mandate to carry out landscape-scale forest restoration. To learn more about the implementation of the Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act, click here.
In 2005, I received the National Parks Conservation Association’s “National Parks Achievement Award” for my role in securing the enactment of the Petrified Forest National Park Expansion Act. The measure, which is now law, expands the park to include an additional 120,000 acres of checker-boarded federal, state, and private lands to protect against theft of petrified wood and fossils, pot hunting, vandalism to petroglyph sites, and the environmental degradation caused by mineral exploration.
Since Congress approved the expansion of the national park boundary, the National Park Service has added approximately 40,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management and private lands to the park. Stiff competition with other National Park Service priorities for limited funds has kept the Petrified Forest from being able to acquire the adjacent additional lands authorized by Congress.
The Northern Arizona Land Exchange and Verde River Basin Partnership Act, commonly known as the Yavapai Land Exchange, was signed into law in 2005. That measure, which I sponsored along with Senator McCain, was supported by the Nature Conservancy, the Central Arizona Land Trust, and the Arizona Antelope Foundation, among others. It will help preserve nearly 25,000 ecologically significant acres in the headwaters of the Verde to protect the watershed, safeguard wildlife habitat, and provide outdoor recreation for future generations. The exchange will also allow a 110-square-mile area in the Prescott National Forest near the existing Juniper Mesa Wilderness to be preserved in its natural state. The new boundaries also include the largest stand of privately owned ponderosa pine forest, along with one of Arizona’s last untouched antelope valleys.
In March 2009, Congress approved the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program (MSCP) Act, which I had introduced with the support of Senators Ensign, Feinstein, and Reid. It authorized funds to cover the federal government’s share of the cost of a comprehensive, cooperative effort among 50 federal and non-federal entities in Arizona, California, and Nevada to protect and maintain wildlife habitat along the Colorado River. It also provided assurances to the affected water and power agencies of the three states that their vital river operations may continue as long as they comply with the conservation program.
Since its enactment, the MSCP has helped to protect approximately 3,600 acres of land, and has helped to secure 15,500 acre-feet of water for the program’s purposes. Hundreds of acres of cottonwood-willow and mesquite habitat have been reestablished at three conservation areas, and approximately 115,700 native razorback suckers and bonytails have been stocked in the Lower Colorado River.
For more information about the MSCP’s accomplishments, please click here.
In portions of southern Arizona, groundwater is withdrawn and used before nature can replenish the aquifer. This situation is most acute in the Sierra Vista Subwatershed of the San Pedro River, where declining water levels could lead to serious consequences for the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (SPRNCA), Fort Huachuca, and the area’s 76,000 residents.
SPRNCA, which protects nearly 43 miles of the San Pedro River, serves as a principal passage for the migration of approximately four million birds. It also provides crucial habitat for 100 species of birds, 81 species of mammals, 43 species of reptiles and amphibians, and two threatened species of native fish. Fort Huachuca is the largest employer in the area and offers significant economic benefits to the local community.
In 2007, the Bureau of Reclamation studied the area’s water use and analyzed different ways to augment the water supply. Following that appraisal, Senator McCain and I introduced the Sierra Vista Subwatershed Feasibility Study Act. That measure, which was approved by Congress in 2009, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a feasibility study of the water augmentation options suggested by Reclamation. The feasibility study is the next step in the process of determining how to address the water challenges facing the Sierra Vista Subwatershed. Congress appropriated $457,000 for the federal share of the study’s costs in FY2012.
Some of the other initiatives I’ve helped to pass include a wetlands restoration program in Yuma as part of the Yuma National Heritage Area, the expansion of Saguaro National Park, and the federal acquisition of other environmentally sensitive lands for preservation purposes. Senator McCain and I also helped win passage of the following bills, which are now law:
• The Fossil Creek Wild and Scenic River Act, which adds 16.8 miles of Fossil Creek to the Scenic Rivers System;
• The Arizona National Scenic Trails Act, which designates the 807-mile trail from the Arizona-Mexico border to the Arizona-Utah border as a National Scenic Trail, a designation held by just 10 other trails in the nation; and
• The Walnut Canyon Study Act, which directs the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service to jointly conduct a study of lands adjacent to the Walnut Canyon National Monument, and to develop a long-term management plan that conserves current natural, cultural, and recreational resources.
