Angie Craig: “If we could treat 5, or 6, or 7 million acres a year, and by that, I mean thinning and cleaning, leaving the old growth…”

“If we could treat 5, or 6, or 7 million acres a year, and by that, I mean thinning and cleaning, leaving the old growth; our legislation talks about leaving no less than 10 trees per acre of the oldest trees, and more if it fits the landscape, or the species, or the watershed in which this activity would be going on. But even if we do all of that--if the public would allow us, and this Senate were to vote to become active managers of our lands once again-- with all of that, the state of our forests is now in such disrepair from a health, fuel-loading, big-kill standpoint, that in the years to come we are still going to lose 4, 5, 6, 7 million acres a year to wildfire. It is simply a situation of human creation by public policy that has denied active and reasonable management on these lands for several decades now. As a result of that, we have a tragedy in the making. But if we act, in the course of the next decade we can save 700, 800, or a million acres of old growth and watershed and wildlife habitat, by these actions, that might otherwise be burned by wildfire.”