Bennet hosts 2015 Fire and Forestry Summit

Today Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet was joined by Senator Cory Gardner at a Fire and Forestry Summit to receive recommendations from a report Bennet commissioned on steps the federal government can take to better support Colorado’s wildfire mitigation efforts.

The senators were presented with those recommendations by the dozens of fire and forestry experts from across the state who worked to compile the report.

The senators were also joined at the summit by El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark, representatives from the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Colorado State University, the Colorado Water Congress, County Commissioners from across the Front Range and West Slope, and other members of the forestry, conservation, and wildfire prevention community.

Following the summit Bennet toured the Navigators Glen Eyrie property to highlight the post-fire flood mitigation efforts in El Paso County.

“Colorado has a vast and deep knowledge of forest health and fire mitigation. It’s based on real-world experience and the federal government should tap into it,” Bennet said. “Our office commissioned this report to hear firsthand from the experts on the ground about what the federal government can do to improve the health of our forests and prevent wildfires. The recommendations we received today will help us develop effective, collaborative policy to help deal with the growing threat of wildfire. We are thankful to everyone who contributed to this important conversation and came out today.”

“Preventing wildfires when possible and preparing for when they do occur is everyone’s job,” Gardner said. “It’s critical for officials from the local level to the federal government to be on the same page, and today’s summit was an important step in ensuring that they are. We must continue to be diligent in our efforts to prevent these incredibly damaging natural disasters and their equally destructive effects.”

In March 2014 Bennet convened a large group of Colorado leaders in forestry and fire mitigation to discuss ways the federal government can best work to support collaborative, on the ground fire protection and forest health efforts. The group spent a day with Senator Bennet and USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment Robert Bonnie, discussing their real-world experiences working in Colorado forests and communities.

At Bennet’s request, the group then worked together to develop a detailed report on the outcomes from that conversation, with specific recommendations for federal policy.

Recommendations included:

Focusing on collaborative decision-making processes that advance conversations between federal decision makers and community leaders to address wildfire prevention, forest management, and regulatory processes.

Increasing education and outreach to homeowners and communities regarding their responsibility to mitigate fuels and property conditions and the actual risk of wildfire.

Investing in preparedness, collaborative planning, capacity building, and proactive work before wildfires occur.

Investing federal resources to support community forest health and wildfire prevention leadership.

Encouraging land management agencies to evaluate their current work and develop new methods that focus on effectiveness across the landscape.

Requesting that federal forest planning information be more accessible to local and regional groups engaged in complementary work.

Bennet has long advocated for a smarter approach to handling wildfires. In 2013, he chaired a subcommittee hearing to bring attention to shrinking budgets for mitigation efforts and to reform the way we fund wildfire fighting efforts. He has worked to attract critical federal resources to help combat wildfires, mitigate their effects, and modernize the air tanker fleet.

Bennet has led efforts to secure Emergency Watershed Protection resources to help Colorado communities recover from previous catastrophic fires, and authored key forest health and wildfire prevention provisions in the Senate Farm Bill.

He authored the PREPARE Act to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to establish a funding stream specifically for wildfire mitigation and award competitive grants to states to prioritize wildfire mitigation and preparedness projects on federal, state, and private lands.

He also is a cosponsor of the bipartisan Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, which seeks to solve the wildfire borrowing problem by treating large, catastrophic fires as natural disasters.

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