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In order to provide adequate, or potentially additional, funding to assist the Forest Service in proactively addressing the risk of catastrophic wildland fires that can threaten communities in the West, as well as the health of our lands and waters, we need your assistance. A good first step in providing us with the information we need is the release of the Forest Service report on the subject currently under review by OMB.

[Page: S6514]  GPO's PDF

   In addition, we would like you to address what actions the Forest Service can undertake to minimize catastrophic fire in the wildland-urban interface; identify appropriate size limitations for thinning of trees; and provide information about specific contractual arrangements that should be employed to most effectively address the risk of wildland fire in the urban-wildland interface.

   Thank you for your continued interest in the safety of communities and the health of our lands and waters. We look forward to your prompt response.

   Sincerely,

   Several Senators addressed the Chair.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to call up amendment No. 3790.

   Mr. GORTON. This one is not done yet.

   Mr. DOMENICI. I believe we have not finished this amendment yet.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to call up my amendment and to then debate it at a later time.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

   Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, if the Senator would yield, I think there are just two more relatively brief speakers, and we can then finish this amendment.

   Mr. SESSIONS. I would set this amendment aside, but I have to go. I could come back, I suppose.

   Mr. GORTON. Then, if it is brief, why don't you go ahead, I suppose.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the Senator's unanimous consent request?

   The Chair hears none, and it is so ordered.

   The Senator from Alabama may proceed to call up his amendment.

   AMENDMENT NO. 3790

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3790.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.

   The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

   The Senator from Alabama [Mr. SESSIONS], for himself and Mr. GRAHAM, Mr. ENZI, Mr. LUGAR, Mr. VOINOVICH, Mr. GRAMS, Mr. REID, Mr. INHOFE, and Mr. BAYH, proposes an amendment numbered 3790.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The amendment is as follows:

   On page 225, between lines 11 and 12, insert the following:

   SEC. . None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to publish Class III gaming procedures under part 291 of title 25, Code of Federal Regulations.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the debate on this amendment be set aside pending the time that Senator CAMPBELL and others would be here to debate.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment will be set aside until such time.

   Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

   Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, for some time now the Senate has been debating, somewhat interchangeably, two issues; one involves protection for roadless areas and the other involves the important issue of fire prevention.

   I would like to take just a minute or 2 to discuss each one of these so that it is clear where we are with respect to this debate.

   The original amendment offered by the senior Senator from Idaho, Mr. CRAIG, my longtime colleague on the Forestry Subcommittee, would have, in effect, presented the Senate with a referendum on the President's roadless proposal, a major environmental initiative, certainly supported by millions of Americans. There have been more than 180 public meetings on this roadless initiative, and more than 500,000 comments. This is certainly the centerpiece of the President's environmental agenda.

   So had we been presented here in the Senate with an up-or-down vote on this roadless proposal, despite my friendship with the Senator from Idaho, I would have had to oppose that original amendment strongly. To me, the President's proposal on roadless areas makes sense for one reason: Protecting additional unspoiled areas can produce gains for fish runs across this country, as well as improving habitat and watershed quality. These environmental gains outweigh the benefits of commercial development on these particular lands.

   A lawsuit is pending in Federal court concerning the FACA issue as related to the roadless initiative. Certainly Congress should allow the judicial process to operate without interference.

   Several of my colleagues have noted that oral arguments are going to be heard on August 7 in that lawsuit. There will be plenty of time for the Senate to act with respect to any issues involving the Federal Advisory Committee. But I say, as the ranking Democrat on the Forestry Subcommittee, I think it would be a great mistake for the Senate to, in effect, ashcan the President's roadless area proposal. Fortunately, the Senate is not going to be asked to vote up or down on that issue today.

   I have, for some time, along with a number of other colleagues, pursued an effort to modernize our policy with respect to both road and roadless areas . There is much that we can do that protects both habitat and also resource-dependent communities. But to have had a referendum on the President's roadless area proposal today, with a lawsuit pending, and with millions of Americans in support of that proposal, would have been, in my view, a very serious mistake.

   Now we are presented with a substitute proposal, initiated by the two Senators from New Mexico, involving fire prevention. At this point, we are talking about something very different than the original Craig proposal. We are talking about an effort to protect homes and businesses, and, by the way, habitat as well.

   I want it understood for the record that this amendment is not going to affect the completion of the roadless area initiative. That is why I am pleased to be able to say that I intend to support this fire prevention initiative. Again, this new amendment does not affect the roadless area proposal.

   With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

   Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I compliment my friend from Oregon because everything he said speaks for me.

   I will be brief, but I think it is important that I put some comments into the RECORD because I have a sense that perhaps Senator CRAIG may be back with a similar amendment at another time, and I think it is important to lay the groundwork for why I would not support it at that time.

   I do support what Senators DOMENICI and BINGAMAN have brought us. I compliment them for bringing this to us. I know they have been very careful not to do anything in this amendment that would, in fact, stop any environmental rules from going forward, in particular the roadless rule that we are in the midst of promulgating.

   I will be supporting the Domenici-Bingaman amendment. I am pleased in the way it has been presented. It is, in fact, a substitute for the Craig amendment.

   Let me ask my friend from New Mexico, does he want to have the floor?

   Mr. DOMENICI. No, thank you, I say to the Senator.

   Mrs. BOXER. All right.

   Mr. President, I have such a good feeling about Interior appropriations bills. My friend, Senator BYRD, and Senator DOMENICI and Senator GORTON have worked hard on this Interior bill.

   For California it is so important. It is wonderful. I just got a reminder note from Senator BYRD on the wonderful things in this bill, for which I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Funding for the historic Presidio, for Lake Tahoe, so many others, the Manzanar historical site. For those of you who may not remember, it was the site where Japanese-Americans were essentially interned. We are going to make a monument out of it.

   So when I see an antienvironmental rider come on this beautiful bill, it is always distressing because, to me, the Interior appropriations bill, it seems to me, should be a positive statement of good things that we are doing for the environment.

[Page: S6515]  GPO's PDF

   So when I heard a rumor that Senator CRAIG would offer his amendment, I decided at that time I would try to talk the Senate out of adopting it. And this has become unnecessary.

   So let me quickly say, I am pleased that what is before us does nothing to stop this roadless policy from going into effect.

   As Senator WYDEN has stated, there have been countless meetings on it. The fact is, the roadless areas are the remaining gems of a forest system that has been degraded by centuries of logging and other types of heavy use. If we look at the big picture, we are really talking only about setting aside 2 percent of all our land in this country as roadless areas . What an important thing that is for us to do because it will in fact preserve our beautiful, priceless environment for future generations and preserve the fishing industry, stop erosion. It is a very important environmental initiative.

   So there is no misunderstanding, we know there are many inroads into these roadless areas . In the next 5 years alone, we are going to see more than 1,000 miles of roads inventoried. We are moving into these pristine areas .

   At some point, we have to say enough is enough in terms of destruction of our natural wilderness and our wonderful natural heritage. I think the U.S. Forest Service has taken a bold and positive step forward with its effort. I am very glad that nothing in this bill will stop them.

   Let me cite a couple of poll numbers. A recent poll done by some pollsters from the other side of the aisle found that 76 percent of the public supports the protection of roadless areas , and in my home State, asking Republicans and Democrats that question, 76 percent of Californians support roadless policies.

   We have editorials that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the RECORD.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

   Clinton Seeks Legacy of Forest Protection

   In recent years, the Clinton administration has been pushing for a more balanced national forest policy, with a group of timber-oriented congressional leaders resisting every step of the way.

   The administration's approach, under U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck, was hardly radical. It was entirely consistent with the preservationist vision of President Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the century when he greatly expanded the amount of national forest. It certainly jibes with the views of most Americans that conservation should get greater priority on public land.

   President Clinton this week took a bold step toward cementing those values by protecting about 40 million acres of U.S. forest land from road building. The proposal would effectively halt logging and mining in those still-pristine areas . About 4 million of the acres are in California, including significant parts of the Sierra Nevada.

   The timber industry, predictably, howled.

   ``These are not the king's lands, they are the serfs' lands, they are the people's lands,'' said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, arguing that Congress should decide forest policy. In a letter to Dombeck, he argued that the Clinton plan would limit forest access.

   The Clinton plan will not curtail access to any of the 380,000 miles of logging roads in national forests--about eight times the length of the interstate highway system. These roads, typically dirt trails wide enough to accommodate a tractor-trailer, have often contributed to erosion, creek sedimentation and other environmental problems.

   This modest but essential effort to curtail further intrusion into the nation's forests will not spell doom and gloom for the timber industry. Less than 5 percent of timber cut in the U.S. comes from national forests, and less than 5 percent of that volume comes from roadless areas .

   It is important to note that the Clinton plan is not a done deal; it is the first step in a regulatory process that could take more than a year and most certainly will be influenced by public input.

   Notably missing from the president's eloquent call to conservation was a commitment to include Alaska's Tongass National Forest, the nation's biggest and the heart of the world's largest remaining expanse of coastal temperate rain forest. Tongass has been a major battleground for lawsuits and legislation over logging in an area with healthy populations of grizzly bears, bald eagles and salmon.

   These are the people's lands, natural treasures, and Americans who care about conservation must ensure their voices are heard in what promises to be a contentious process.

--

   Fight Over Forests--Which Public Lands Should Remain Roadless ?

   President Clinton used the Shenandoah Valley as the vista for his recent announcement to seek permanent protections for up to 40 million acres of pristine, roadless national forests. A more appropriate backdrop would have been somewhere between a rock and a hard place. Seeking to manufacture a legacy of forest protection in his remaining months in office, Clinton faces an uphill struggle.

   The president and Congress are supposed to work together to pass laws that protect forests as wilderness. This is how approximately 34 million acres of the 191 million acre national forest system are now officially protected with the wilderness designation. These 40 million acres that are the target of Clinton's new effort are not now legally designated as wilderness, yet function in nature as such. There are no roads on these lands--each of 5,000 acres or greater--and in many cases they are adjacent to a designated wilderness area.

   The Republican-led Congress, beholden on this issue to an extractionist ideology, is simply incapable of working with the president on wilderness issues, with the sole notable exception of an emerging bipartisan effort in western Utah. A compromise that could serve multiple interests--additions to wilderness areas in return for additional certainty on other lands for timber harvests--is not possible in this political environment. As Republicans use riders attached onto appropriation bills to thwart forestry planning efforts, many environmental groups have taken up the call for no logging whatsoever on any public lands. The average American, meanwhile, uses more paper products than anybody else on Earth.

   As Clinton wades into this ideological war, he has few options. Legally, the strategy with the best chance of permanency is to embody new protections for roadless areas within an environmental impact statement that offers a scientific basis for the action.

   The strategy may prove to be a long shot. On forestry issues in the Sierra, for example, the administration has been unable since 1993 to finish an environmental impact statement that offers final guidelines on how to protect the California spotted owl. Courts, meanwhile, have stalled Clinton's logging strategy for national forests in the Pacific Northwest. Environmental groups successfully challenged the adequacy of the environmental impact statements, which did not include surveys for certain rare species such as mollusks.

   Ironically, the very legal techniques used by roadless advocates to challenge logging plans will be handy weapons to attack Clinton's roadless plan--if the Forest Service manages to produce the environmental documentation before he leaves office. There's not much time left to count mollusks on 40 million acres of roadless America. In the forests, the biologists better start counting. And in Washington, leaders on both sides of the aisle should contemplate a bipartisan approach to forestry policy.

--

   Clinton's Legacy as Preservationist?

   For someone who paid no attention to environmental issues during his first year in office, Bill Clinton may wind up with an impressive legacy as a preservationist. In addition to his earlier programs to restore the Everglades and to protect Yellowstone, the forests of the Pacific Northwest and the redwoods in California, the president recently set in motion a plan that would, in effect, create 40 million acres of new wilderness by blocking road building in much of the national forest.

   In recent months, his secretary of the interior, Bruce Babbitt, has been exploring the possibility of additional action under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a little-known statute that allows presidents, by executive order, to protect public lands from development by designating them as national monuments. If used intelligently, the act offers Clinton a useful tool to set aside vulnerable public lands before he leaves office.

   Because it allows a president to act on his own authority and without engaging Congress, the Antiquities Act is an attractive weapon to any president whose time is running out and who wishes to quickly enlarge his environmental record.

   In 1978, President Jimmy Carter designated 15 monuments in Alaska, which in turn accelerated passage of a bill that added 47 million acres in Alaska to the national park system. Near the end of his first term, Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument on 1.7 million unprotected acres in Utah.

   In the last 93 years, all but three presidents--Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush--have designated at least one national monument. There are now more than 100.

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