WASHINGTON – Years of efforts to promote “balanced, common sense” forest management reforms by U.S. Senator Pete Domenici culminated Thursday night with Senate passage of a major, bipartisan bill that will help expedite forest health work in millions of acres of forests in New Mexico and around the nation. Domenici voted for Senate passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (HR.1904), a bipartisan bill he helped develop to give land managers more freedom to undertake forest health activities in the 190 million acres of federal forests identified as being at “unnaturally high risk of catastrophic wildfires and large-scale insect and disease outbreaks.” Domenici, as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was part of a bipartisan Senate group that drafted the Senate substitute of HR.1904—an agreement accepted by the Senate Wednesday on a 97-1 vote. The Senate accepted a few minor amendments to the underlying bill before passing the bill Thursday night, 80 to 14. The bill now goes to a conference committee where differences in the House and Senate-passed versions of the legislation will be reconciled. “This is a remarkable vote that finally opens the door to significant land management reforms. It is the culmination of years of effort to impose balanced, common sense reforms on how we manage our national forests. There is no question our forests are suffering. They are fire traps. The catastrophic fires and infestations we’ve seen in New Mexico alone are testaments to that,” Domenici said. “An overwhelming number of Senators have come to the realization that it is time to begin fixing a broken set of management tools for our forests. It is incredible that it has taken us this long to reach this point. The sad state of our national forests did not come upon us all of a sudden,” he said. “We now have a good bill that doesn’t have everything everyone wanted. But it is a solid plan from which we can work with the House to get a bill the President will sign.” As chairman of the Energy committee, Domenici has this year conducted hearings on reforming forest management policies, and to examine impacts of insects, disease, weather and fires on public and private forest lands. In the past five years, the Forest Service has only thinned 1.4 million acres nationally. In contrast, 17 times more rangeland has burned in the last five years than have been managed. Senator Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee that initially approved HR.1904. Faced with the prospect of a filibuster on the bill, Domenici and Cochran teamed with Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), and Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.) to craft the bipartisan agreement passed by the Senate. It is the latest endeavor by Domenici to change forest management. In 2000, Domenici wrote the law that created the Forest Hazardous Fuels Reduction, or “Happy Forests,” Initiative to begin alleviating emergency threats to so-called “urban or wildland interface areas” or where communities abut federal forests. This program was developed after the devastating May 2000 Cerro Grande Fire in northern New Mexico. The Senate-passed legislation (HR.1904) does the following: • Results in a more public, expedited, process for moving hazardous fuels projects through the NEPA process. • Prioritizes treatment of up to 20 million acres in the Wildland Urban Interfaces, as well as high risk areas outside the Wildland Urban Interface. • Provides for the development of a new and improved pre-decisional protest process for projects authorized under this bill. The new process will replace the highly contentious, time consuming, appeals process that currently delays many forest health projects. • Calls for court cases on hazardous fuel projects to be heard within the district they are located, and encourages the courts to deal with these cases in a timely fashion. • Directs that all preliminary injunctions be reviewed every 60 days, with the opportunity for the parties to update the judges on changes in conditions so the court may respond to those changes if needed. • Reminds the courts that when weighing the equities that they should balance the impacts to the ecosystem of the short and long-term effects of undertaking the project, against the short and long-term effects of not undertaking the project. • Authorizes $760 million annually for hazardous fuel reduction work, including the projects authorized under this act, which is more than double what is currently being requested. --30--