Michael Bennet: “we may not be in a quorum call, but I can tell you this, we are in the midst of a 1,200-year drought in the American…”

“we may not be in a quorum call, but I can tell you this, we are in the midst of a 1,200-year drought in the American West that challenges us in extraordinary ways--from vast new insect and disease outbreaks to catastrophic wildfires. Instead of having fire seasons, there are many people now who observe that it has become trite, I would say, to observe, as the fire season lasts all year. Our national forests in Colorado and throughout the Rocky Mountain West are the headwaters of America. In those forests is the origin of the streams and rivers that flow to the rest of the Western United States. In the case of just the Colorado River Basin alone, 40 million people rely on it. It is the lifeblood of the American West, the lifeblood of the Western United States, and of every town and every community no matter how big and no matter how small. In Colorado and on every farm and ranch across the American West, they depend on this water, and they depend on the forests where this water stops. The critical aspect of this, I think, is that everybody who is downstream from us needs to care about the health of our forests and also our public lands. As many people know, since COVID ripped through the United States of America, our public lands have become a place for the American people to find refuge, for the American people to be able to get away from each other, for families to have the time to also be together on America's public lands.…”