Bipartisan Senate bill aims to prevent Western wildfires

As wildfires rage across California and the West, Democratic and Republican senators have joined forces to help rural communities better prepare for and prevent catastrophic wildfires. A bill introduced Thursday by senators from three Northwestern states would authorize more than $100 million to help at-risk communities prevent wildfires and create a pilot program to cut down trees in the most fire-prone areas. Under a streamlined approval process, forest managers would “thin” pine forests near populated areas and do controlled burns in remote regions. The bill also calls for detailed reviews of any wildfire that burns over 100,000 acres. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state said the bill would “create new tools to reduce fire risk and help better protect our communities,” especially those in the Northwest near fire-prone pine forests. Cantwell, top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, co-sponsored the bill with Democrats Patty Murray of Washington state, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republicans Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho. Risch, who also serves on the natural resources panel, said the nation needs to “actively manage our forests to reduce the fuel available for fires to burn.” The bipartisan bill is a compromise between Republicans eager to make it easier for federal land managers to thin overgrown woodlands and Democrats dubious of allowing timber companies greater access to harvest federally owned forests...more

It was "bipartisan" legislation (NEPA, ESA, etc.) that caused this problem, so maybe bipartisan legislation can fix it. But a pilot project? At least 42 people were just killed in Ca, 100,000 evacuated and more than 6,000 homes destroyed, and all they can produce is a pilot program? Federal land use plans are being prepared this very day that will continue the problem or make it worse, and the response is a smattering of pilot projects and "detailed reviews" of future wildfires that cause death and destruction? 

All this bipartisan legislation will mean is that those areas that just happen to be in a district or state where their Senator or House member has seniority on the appropriations committee will see limited thinning, and more money will be wasted writing "reviews". It's bipartisan chicanery, and nothing else.