 |
|
Link between fires and climate on Senate subcommittee's agenda
BY DAN BERMAN, GREENWIRE, 01/29/07
The new chairman of the Senate Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee wants to "intensively" explore the link between global warming and worsening forest fires.
"I don't think this is rocket science here," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told a Pinchot Institute for Conservation conference Friday on Capitol Hill. "We are seeing that the world is getting hotter, we are seeing out on the forest floor the combination of increased fuel loads" and increased temperatures.
Wyden joins retiring Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth and growing scientific research in expressing concern about the effect of rising temperatures on fire seasons and fire intensity. Earlier this month, Bosworth said foresters must adapt to global warming.
"The biggest challenge will be the effect of climate change on the natural resources in our care," said Bosworth, noting that some of the infestations of invasive species and insects the Forest Service has been coping with may be due to global warming as well (Greenwire, Jan. 12).
A federally funded report last summer found that global warming, not poor forest management, is responsible for accelerating catastrophic Western forest fires over the past 35 years. The report also found that warmer springs and summers will likely continue to intensify, further increasing large wildfires and making forest management techniques such as thinning and fire suppression ineffective.
"Congress has ducked this in the past," Wyden said. "There hasn't been a hearing or real effort to examine the link between global warming and the forest fires that have gotten bigger and hotter. Those days are over."
Woody biomass
Wyden also plans to use his new post to prod the Forest Service to accelerate biomass stewardship contracts such as one announced earlier this month in Oregon.
Advocates of woody biomass say it can be a significant alternative energy source as well as benefit forest health by removing smaller diameter timber and brush from at-risk forests. The federal government spent nearly $2 billion fighting wildfires that burned over 9.7 million acres in 2006, a topic the full Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will explore at a hearing tomorrow.
But the service has been slow to implement stewardship contracting to get companies to use woody biomass, something Wyden plans to change. "I'm going to portray it that way in terms of how we use our time and where we put our energy," he said. "We can make a modest effort up front with thinning programs that happen to be good for communities and create jobs.
"Or we can just say, 'Aw, I don't know if we can really do it, gosh, there's some reg that didn't get out, and we'll just have to wait until the reg to amend the reg to amend the reg gets done,'" Wyden added. "I'm going to try to break that spiral of inaction."
Wyden cited the announcement this month that DG Energy plans a biomass power plant in Lakeview, Ore., that will be powered by biomass from overstocked forests in the region. The $20 million project could produce nearly 100,000 megawatt-hours of power annually (Land Letter, Jan. 18).
The DG project and one announced recently by the Rough and Ready Lumber Co. in Oregon are prime examples "to show it isn't just a guy in the U.S. Senate banging his gavel on the third floor of Dirksen," Wyden said. "In my view, this is not a question of scientific knowledge. This is a question of political will. This is a question if people want to dig in and try and get it done."
| |
|
|
|
|
|
