REFERENCE TITLE: forests; proper management.

State of Arizona

Senate

Fifty-fifth Legislature

First Regular Session

2021

SR 1002

Introduced by

Senator Kerr

A RESOLUTION

supporting proper forest management.

(TEXT OF BILL BEGINS ON NEXT PAGE)

Whereas, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, in 2020 nearly 50,000 wildland fires across the nation burned over 8.7 million acres; and

Whereas, megafires in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington threatened suburbs and compromised air quality; and

Whereas, soils that are damaged by fire no longer have vegetation, which can cause mudslides and damage water supplies, sometimes disastrously; and

Whereas, five of the six largest fires in California history occurred in 2020, burning more than 4 million acres, damaging more than 9,200 structures and killing 31 people; and

Whereas, for decades, national forests were an environmental, recreational and economic asset for neighboring communities, providing forest products for a thriving timber industry, recreation for families and environmental awareness for conservationists; and

Whereas, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, environmental groups sued the United States Forest Service to halt timber sales, claiming that the sales threatened the habitat of the Mexican spotted owl and other species; and

Whereas, these lawsuits were eventually defeated but not before Arizona's once-thriving timber industry was starved of its source of wood product. The elimination of Arizona's timber industry, along with additional lawsuits from environmental groups and federal mismanagement, has led to a dramatic increase in tree density throughout Arizona's national forests; and

Whereas, tree volume removal on national forests in California has decreased by 90 percent since the 1980s; and

Whereas, as a result of these higher tree densities and severe drought conditions, Arizona and other states began to experience wildfires on a significantly larger scale than ever before in the nation's history; and

Whereas, fire seasons today are 78 days longer than in the 1970s; and

Whereas, during the last 20 years, at least 10 states have had their largest fires on record and over 100 million acres of national forests have burned; and

Whereas, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 46,000 homes and 70,000 communities are at risk from wildfire in the United States; and

Whereas, without sound forest management, national forests will be lost to fire, insects and disease; and

Whereas, minimizing calamitous fire losses of lives, homes, communities and watersheds will require effective leadership across the nation; and

Whereas, protecting watersheds was one of the primary purposes of Congress in creating national forests through the Organic Act of 1897; and

Whereas, forest management improvements can be implemented to reduce the spread of catastrophic fires by developing a coordinated agreement and solid plan to establish hundreds of miles of strategically constructed shaded fuel breaks and by amending federal law to stop frivolous lawsuits; and

Whereas, accelerated landscape-scale, consensus-based, industry‑supported community protection, forest restoration and fire management activities will enhance the ecological and economic health of forests and provide innumerable benefits to Arizona and the United States, including protection from unnaturally severe wildfires as well as jobs and sustained economic revenue.

Therefore

Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Arizona:

That the Members of the Senate place the highest importance on the issue of forest management and express their support of landscape-scale planning, forest thinning projects and the acceleration of consensus-supported and scientifically informed forest restoration treatments across this state and the nation.