Angie Craig: “I come to the floor one more time this week to speak about the tragedies in the West as they play out. While my time is…”

“I come to the floor one more time this week to speak about the tragedies in the West as they play out. While my time is limited this morning, I thought it was important that I talk about the human side of this tragedy. Let me read this wire story about Jackie Nelson of Globe, AZ, driving her pickup into a makeshift shelter yesterday morning to try to find food for a 7-month-old granddaughter of hers. She left her home on a hillside in Arizona to burn in the wildfires that play out there. She does not know whether she will go home to that home or whether she will literally be adrift and have to seek shelter from public sources. The article goes on to say: That lament resounded across the West today, as 18 large blazes burned in six states, consuming acreage at a pace roughly double the 10-year average. The reason I want to talk about that very briefly, as I did yesterday morning, is that today in the West over 2.5 million acres of public land have now been charred into a smoldering rubble--homes, beautiful wildlife habitat, timbered acreages--that simply we forgot because the public policy of this country said, over a decade ago: Leave the land to Mother Nature and walk away. And in our walking away, in the pursuit of the environment, Mother Nature took charge. Today, Mother Nature rules the West, and her mode of operation is a monstrous wildfire consuming the public timber reserves of the West, the wildlife habitat, and the watershed.”