Greg Walden: “The California fires are tragic in what is happening to the people who live there, the loss of life, the loss of…”

“The California fires are tragic in what is happening to the people who live there, the loss of life, the loss of habitat, the pollution that is going into the air. I have been told that the California wildfires have burned the equivalent of 10 times the square mileage of the District of Columbia. Ten times the size of the District of Columbia has gone up in smoke in California so far. In my district in Oregon this year, 11 times the size of the District of Columbia has gone up in fire. Now fortunately we have not seen the loss of life and we haven't seen the loss of homes. But what we have seen is the loss of land for grazing and habitat and clean water as our watersheds have gone up in smoke. This picture here I brought down to the floor for my colleagues to see. It is of two young children who are from Harney County, Oregon. This is the Egley fire which burned in my district 140,000 acres; 140,000 acres, the Egley fire burned in Harney County. America's forest lands going up in smoke. There are 192 million acres of national forest system lands. According to the Forest Service, 52 million of those acres are at high risk to catastrophic wildfires.”