Paying for Wildfires & Changing ESA Protection

Paying for Wildfires & Changing ESA Protection. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

Last year was a bad year for wildfires and even as firefighters are working to quench the blazes, others are trying to figure out how to pay for it. Oregon's Sen. Ron Wyden recently asked Tom Tidwell, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service about the agency's ongoing support for his bipartisan wildfire funding fix that would free up more funding for the work that prevents the largest, most damaging wildfires.

WYDEN: This effort in fire borrowing seems like the longest running battle since the Trojan War. We've been at this since before I was chair of this committee and shorthand, this is about raiding the prevention fund in order to fight fire. Getting to "yes" on forestry policy is a really heavy lift. It is a real challenge and you've got to have a bipartisan approach.

The head of the Western Governors Association says the nation needs to change the way it protects endangered species because the current practice is bogged down in lawsuits and weakened by mistrust. The problem, according to Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, is nationwide and that he hopes to build bipartisan support for changes in the federal Endangered Species Act. He didn't suggest any specific changes but problems with endangered species like the sage grouse, which range across a 257,000-square-miles and 11 states, have been tied up in legal battles for years frustrating landowners.

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