<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2013 Efforts to combat larger and more severe wildfires mean less money for other U.S. Forest Service endeavors \u2013 including recreation, members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources noted at a hearing Tuesday on the agency\u2019s 2017 budget request.<\/p>\n
Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., a committee member, said it\u2019s difficult for the Forest Service to keep up with the growing recreation industry \u2013 particularly skiing in Colorado \u2013 that uses Forest Service lands. He specifically pointed to the lack of resources at the White River National Forest in Colorado as an example of the Forest Service\u2019s inability to adequately partner with local industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince 2009, they\u2019ve seen a 40 percent reduction in their budget at the White River National Forest,\u201d Gardner said.<\/p>\n
Thomas Tidwell, chief of the U.S. Forest Service and the main witness, told Gardner the issue is a national problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing what we can to be able to be a good partner, to be able to be responsive,\u201d Tidwell said. \u201cBut the problem you mentioned, the staffing, it\u2019s just something that\u2019s occurred because of the cost of fire suppression. And it occurred gradually over quite a few years \u2013 over 10-plus years \u2013 to the point where we have 33 percent fewer employees outside of fire than we had just a few years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tidwell told the committee that the 2017 fiscal year budget request was similar to the agency\u2019s 2016 budget, and it \u201crequires us to make some really tough decisions with a flat budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president\u2019s proposed overall budget for discretionary funding for the Forest Service in (fiscal year) 2017 is $4.9 billion,\u201d Tidwell said in his submitted testimony. \u201cThat is $787 million less than the (fiscal year) 2016 enacted level and reflects strategic investments to reduce wildfire threats to communities and maintain forest restoration investments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairwoman of the committee, said she was \u201cnot enamored with the budget.\u201d But she added that the members agreed on the need to better prioritize firefighting efforts to combat the severity and length of the wildfire season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that we cannot continue to fight fires by diverting funds from other parts of the Forest Service budget, \u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Murkowski, who said wildfire spending issues were \u201cnot just a budget problem, but also a management problem,\u201d cited successful efforts to include wildfire suppression funding in last year\u2019s omnibus spending bill as one potential way of easing constraints on the Forest Service budget. The bill included $1.6 billion for fire suppression, $545 million for hazardous fuels reduction and $360 million for the Forest Service timber program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gardner says cuts hurt Colorado\u2019s outdoors industry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,549],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-106272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-united-states-forest-service"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106272"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=106272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}