Senate Passes Healthy Forest Plan

The President’s Healthy Forest Initiative, designed to care for forests and rangelands, reduce the risk to communities, and protect delicate ecosystems and wildlife habitat Oct. 30 passed the Senate. NCBA and Public Lands Council support the bill, which would prevent forage from being crowded by invasive weeds or afflicted with insects or disease. In addition, wildfire prevention measures would enhance the safety of rural communities vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire. 

“Wildfires, disease, insects and weeds threaten the rangelands and forestlands where cattle graze,” says Idaho cattle producer and NCBA President Eric Davis.  

The Healthy Forests Initiative calls for using hazardous fuels reduction projects to restore forests and woodlands to healthier, natural conditions. It also would give public land managers the tools to undertake common sense management of forests and woodlands, and calls for more timely responses to disease and insect infestations that threaten to devastate forests.

 “These programs will not only help the management of public lands, but also protect the neighboring private lands where many producers have operations,” says Arizona producer Andy Groseta, who chairs NCBA’s Federal Lands Committee.

 According to White House reports, an estimated 190 million acres of federal forests and rangelands in the United States — an area almost twice the size of California — continue to face an elevated risk of catastrophic fire due to unnatural, densely packed forest conditions and insect and disease damage.