It is time our federal government is held accountable for its gross mismanagement of our federal forests and the horrific fires that result from such mismanagement. Each year Oregonians are choked by smoke and their communities and lives are threatened by fire.
The fires that start on private forestlands are quickly extinguished while the fires on public land are not put out immediately and they grow rapidly out of control. Waiting for bureaucrats in Washington DC to fight fires in Oregon has not been a successful model.
Likewise, the government is held hostage by the threat of litigation funded by the infamous
“Equal Access to Justice Act” which prompts attorneys to engage in the litigation lottery where winning against the government means a huge taxpayer funded plaintiff’s attorney payday.
Finally, we need to get back into the woods to log and remove massive amounts of timber both for the economic survival of local economies of Oregon and for the safety of the timber communities that are otherwise in real danger of burning up when the huge and ever-growing stockpiles of wood that surround them catch fire.
As your next Congressman in CD 2, I promise to advocate for sustainable and responsible management in our Federal Forests. We need approaches that reduce fuel loads, enhance salvage logging and practice sustained yield harvests. And we must support our O & C Counties, and to do all of this we must get rid of or dramatically change the Equal Access to Justice Act.