STATEMENT OF BLAINE CORNELL, SONORA, CALIFORNIA 



Mr. Cornell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the 

 Committee. It's my pleasure to be here today. 



As a way of introduction of myself, my background is as follows. 

 I have a bachelor of science degree from the University of Idaho, 

 which is I understand an excellent facility. I served 33 years in 

 various positions in the Forest Service on the National Forests in 

 Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and California, and that included respon- 

 sibility for fire management in some situations. I have had the full 

 spectrum of fire management training and have qualified for and 

 operated on all levels of the incident management system. I've been 

 involved in the application of prescribed fire, many, many episodes 

 of fire suppression in the western United States, and I have par- 

 ticipated in the pretreatment of conifer stands for the introduction 

 of prescribed fire and I've been involved in prescribed fire. 



I participated for a number of years in the training of managers 

 in advanced incident management at the national level. I partici- 

 pated as a member of the Fire Management Policy Review Team 

 appointed to review the application of fire polices of the USDA and 

 the USDI following the 1988 fire season. I retired from the position 

 of Forest Supervisor of the Stanislaus National Forest in December 

 of 1989. Since that time I've done consulting work and have re- 

 mained involved in land management issues, including wildfire and 

 prescribed fire. I am also professional forester in the State of Cali- 

 fornia. 



The years, such as the last few, certainly have raised a lot of se- 

 rious questions, and I think some of the answers to those are fairly 

 apparent. Consequently, it has been a practice to sit down and re- 

 view policies. I've had an opportunity to review the Fire Manage- 

 ment policy statement issued by the Forest Service, the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior and others, 

 and I guess I have some concerns. 



Just as a way of trying to summarize this without going through 

 my whole presentation is the loss of fire management skills in 

 these agencies is really a critical problem. It was a problem in 1988 

 in the Northern Rocky Mountain region, and it's a problem now as 

 these issues get more complex, and certainly they are. 



Now I'm going to spend most of my time talking about the Sierra 

 Nevada because it's an area I'm very familiar with. The Sierra Ne- 

 vada Ecosystem Project has provided a lot of interesting informa- 

 tion summaries that haven't been available before about the situa- 

 tion that has resulted. Of course, the decade of the 1980's and 

 1990's have been characterized by large fires, many of which re- 

 sulted from lightning. Typically since the early 1900's human- 

 caused fires have burned more acreage in the Sierra, but in the 

 1980's and 1990's it was lightning. 



The treatment of fuels to deal with this issue is an expensive and 

 long-term process. In California, a Forest Service study indicated 

 it would require the treatment of about a million acres a year for 

 30 years to get on top of the problem just on National Forest land, 

 and that involves repeated entries to adequately take care of the 

 job so at some point you could allow fire ignitions to burn without 

 the kind of damage you see today. 



