Discussing Wildfires & Gypsy Moth Plan

Discussing Wildfires & Gypsy Moth Plan. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

At a House Committee on Natural Resources Oversight Hearing "on the President's 2017 Budget Proposal," Rep. Dan Newhouse asked Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell about catastrophic wildfires and the problem of "fire borrowing." Newhouse says it's important to make some changes.

NEWHOUSE: We've spent a lot of time this whole past year talking about ways we can improve the Forest Service and the Department of Interiors approach to managing federal forest, federal lands and I think that the more that we can do along those lines to improve the health of our forests, the resiliency of forests, to withstand naturally occurring fires but to prevent them from becoming catastrophic in nature, I think we will be money ahead.

The Washington State Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of Agriculture are now accepting public comments on a proposed plan to eradicate introductions of gypsy moth at seven sites in Western Washington totaling more than 10,000 acres. State and federal laws require two environmental documents assessing the impact of the treatment on the environment. The first of these documents, a draft environmental assessment prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act, is now available for review on the WSDA's website or at select libraries.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.