Jeff Merkley

I want to emphasize that word, 'required'.

I advocated for and we included in last year's funding bill $7 million for startup funding for the Department to begin consultations with tribes.

It desperately needs those investments from the Department, and I will certainly be working with you towards that goal.

We must recognize as a Congress that non-defense funding is just as important as defense spending.

One of my goals, and I think it is shared by Senator Murkowski, is that we invest on both ends on making our forests healthier and more fire resilient.

It is essential. People can't take jobs if they can't afford a place to live.

There are two routes to doing this. One is kind of a voluntary effort through the Xerces Society, but the other is for us to have a regulation that says you can label these plants pollinators safe if they have been raised in this manner.

Boosting the boots on the ground, if you will, across Indian country seems to be a central tenet of this request.

Thank you, Senator. You timed it just perfectly.

I think it would be very significant to the tribe.

I think it is actually something that you would have the power to do without legislation.

We are determined to try to prevent that fire borrowing, which is why we are keeping the window open for a supplemental of another $450 million.

We have to bring balance to our forests through collaboration, we need to work across the lines, the divisions of the timber wars of the past.

All three provide transformative investment.

A factor aggravating the ferocity of these fires is climate chaos, longer, hotter fire seasons.

Certainly, the idea that many folks do, it is appropriate for them to move into forest management work when they are not fighting fires.

What can we do to actually implement significant co-management work that I find completely appropriate and valuable?

We need to double down on other forest management activities critical to forest resilience and forest health.

I think we all agree that a continuing resolution, or government shutdown, would be a disaster.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act provided for investment in high-risk firesheds.

The primary reason that I have been hearing, personally from firefighters, is the pay gap.

Hazardous fuels reduction continues to be very important, and between the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act, Congress invested more than $3 billion in the Forest Service's hazardous fuels work.

The budget also proposes a new program, it is a program-- actually I can't say it is really new and that we funded it in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act--but it will be new to our annual Appropriations, and that is Burned Area…

Everywhere I go in Oregon I hear people say: Let us do everything we can to make the forest more resilient.