By Hannah Grover
U.S. Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Chris French said his agency will need assistance from state and community partners amid budget cuts and staff departures.
French answered questions during a U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry this week during a hearing on the Fix Our Forests Act.
The Fix Our Forests Act — which is sponsored by Sens. John Curtis, R-Utah, John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado, Tim Sheehy, R-Montana, and Alex Padilla, D-California — is intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. Some critics allege the legislation will not accomplish its intended purpose and would instead pave the way for massive logging operations on public lands.
The legislation passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in January on a vote of 279-141.
However, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California, questioned if there is funding available to implement the measures outlined in the bill.
“My concern is that we’re laying off federal firefighters. We’re clawing back grants that are used for brush clearance. A lot of the laudable things that are established in the Fix Our Forests Act aren’t funded with any additional money,” he said.
While he said there are laudable measures in the Fix Our Forests Act, he asked French what safeguards are in place to ensure the bill is “really about fire mitigation and not just about timber harvesting.”
“There are so many safeguards in our system right now…any project we put out there has to follow the safeguards and the parameters that are established in [the[ forest plan,” French said.
Democrats on the committee used the opportunity to question French about recent reductions in staff at the federal agency.
French told committee members that about 25% of the agency’s non-fire workforce has “taken advantage of the fork in the road to leave the Forest Service.” He said the number of workers who are no longer with the agency varies from region to region.
“We have some places where we’ve lost considerable staff,” he said.
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, said his constituents and people throughout the Rocky Mountain region are concerned that there may not be enough personnel available to fight fires this year.
French said the Forest Service manages about 75% of the wildfire resources in the country.
Committee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, said in her opening remarks that the Forest Service has “reportedly lost more than 4000 employees since January, and while many wildland firefighters have been exempted from workforce reduction initiatives, I’m concerned that many Forest Service employees with so called red cards have departed the agency.”
Red cards are certifications that show a federal employee has met the needed requirements for fighting wildfires.
French said it has been “deeply, deeply disappointing” to see the number of red card holders who have “been separated from the agency at this moment.”
While the federal government says wildland firefighters were exempted from the widespread federal layoffs, members of Colorado’s congressional delegation say about 3,000 Forest Service employees who had red cards have been laid off since President Donald Trump took office in January.
Klobuchar and Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, last month questioning the impacts that reductions in the agency’s workforce could have.
“We have prioritized response to wildfire across the agency to be the number one priority for all employees,” French said.
Klobuchar also noted that the Forest Service could face future budget cuts and that the proposed budget calls for moving the wildfire operations out of the Forest Service’s oversight.
“These are concerning proposals that have an impact on lives and livelihoods,” she said.
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California, asked French how the agency will be able to do “anything other than timber harvesting contemplated in” the Fix Our Forests Act in light of budget and workforce reductions.
“We’re gonna need a lot of help from our state partners, our community partners and others,” French said.