California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has joined with a Montana Republican to craft a bill that would expedite logging and other forest management projects near electrical transmission lines and roads in an effort to head off catastrophic wildfires.
The bill is also aimed at slowing or stopping lawsuits that block logging projects on federal land.
Feinstein, a five-term Democrat, and first-term Sen. Steve Daines told The Associated Press they are working with U.S. Forest Service officials on finalizing the bill's text. They say they will introduce the bill after the Senate's August recess, but wanted to announce their plans now as the western U.S. states enter their peak fire season.
"Unfortunately, millions of acres of forests in our states and across the West remain at high risk of catastrophic wildfires, and there is strong consensus that fire seasons will only get worse," Feinstein and Daines said in a statement on Thursday.
“We’re working together to develop bipartisan legislation to improve management and speed up restoration of forest landscapes in California and Montana, create viable solutions for the removal of woody biomass and dead and dying trees, accelerate post-fire restoration and reforestation, and expedite targeted treatments of dangerously dense forested areas where wildfires are most likely to start," the statement said.
Fire seasons have grown longer and more intense in recent years in the West because of hotter, drier weather and widespread tree deaths due to insects and disease.
In California, those conditions have helped fuel several years of devastating wildfires, including last November's Camp Fire in Butte County. That blaze, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history, killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in and around the town of Paradise.
