Mr. Neuenschwander. Well would you give me 10? 



Chairman HANSEN. Give it your best shot, would you. 



Mr. Neuenschwander. Five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Chairman Hansen. We're going to turn the lights on you, and I 

 won't hit the gavel, but we'll get real antsy if you go much over 

 that. 



STATEMENT OF DR. LEON F. NEUENSCHWANDER, PROFESSOR 

 OF FOREST RESOURCES, UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO 



Mr. Neuenschwander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and distin- 

 guished Members of the Committee. It's certainly my privilege to 

 be here. 



I would like to start by saying that in my opinion the increased 

 wildland fire activity is a symptom of the declining health in our 

 western forests and rangelands. While there are contributing rea- 

 sons for this, I will just talk about one of them, and that is the ex- 

 clusion of fire in our forests. 



I have provided to you a set of photos and plates, and if you 

 would look at those as I talk we'll go quickly. 



The first one is from National Geographic, this month's issue, 

 and it illustrates here, well it's a computer diagram and it illus- 

 trates the change in the intensity of the fires. The above part here, 

 the fire is burning through the forest in which trees have en- 

 croached since fire exclusion. The lower portion has had frequent 

 fires and is a forest of the past. 



Plate 2 is the State of our forests today in many areas showing 

 the young trees that have come in with the exclusion of fire. 



Plate No. 3 here, this one, shows how these fires are burning 

 today. Now compare that to the use of prescribed fire where forests 

 have not had fire exclusion. Now this is a group of Idaho students 

 burning an area with prescribed fire, and notice that the flames 

 are similar to that with the National Geographic. This costs less 

 than 10 acres to do and it is safe. 



The slide is from the American Forest Magazine. I think it was 

 about 1911. This is a firefighter easily controlling this fire. This is 

 how fires burned in the past before fire exclusion in many of our 

 ponderosa pine and douglas fir forests, not all. 



Unfortunately, with fire exclusion we will now look at an exam- 

 ple of the Star Gulch fire. It burned very much like this one. Fire 

 had been excluded since 1889. It had not burned and the result 

 was a very high intensity and tree-killing wildfire. 



Let me show you that in terms of a computer graphic, a GIS 

 graphic of a landscape of this Star Gulch fire where fire was ex- 

 cluded. Now you have to use your imagination just a little bit here 

 because this is showing you that the black areas are where all of 

 the ponderosa pine and douglas firs were killed. There are no live 

 trees, or very few. 



The yellow is where the fire intensities were relatively low and 

 some trees survived, and the green unburned. All of the gold and 

 black would have been green before this fire, and had the fire ex- 

 clusion not been present the 10,000 acres in which all the trees 

 were killed would not have taken place. This cost well over $100 

 per acre to suppress the fire. 



