We have a fire problem in the North State because we have a forest management problem, and the crux of the problem is that there is too much biomass in our forests.

We need to cut down many of the small- and medium-sized trees to create space. This space will facilitate tree growth and fire safety, while generating responsible, renewable revenues for property owners. Our forests are a resource, but they are also increasingly a risk: we can manage that risk better through better policies.

Public discourse on this topic has too often been ruined by simplistic, sound-bite-ready policies on both sides of the political aisle. We can’t solve forestry with soundbites. My brother lost his house in Redding to the Carr fire: I have skin in the game, and I know that the status quo is unacceptable.

Policy Proposals:

1. Transition the Forest Service from USDA to the Department of Interior – where it would join the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service in managing our natural resources.
2. Subsidize the start-up costs and streamline the regulations for greater mill capacity and responsible logging in the North State. This will include market interventions to make American timber more competitive. We have too much biomass in our forests and we need to incentivize the market to thin the small, crowded trees that threaten our communities.

We need a more flexible way to manage wildland firefighters. We need pre-trained, part-time crews that the government can activate as needed.

Fires are a national security problem, that are hard to predict, with a straightforward – though physically demanding – training pipeline. I’ve spent 10 years in the Army Reserves: this is literally the same set of problems that the Reserves and Guard were designed to solve. War is rare, unpredictable, and requires a country to have trained soldiers before it starts. We should use the military reserve/guard force structure as a model and apply it to the way we fight fires.

Policy Proposals:

1. We need to fund, train, and equip thousands of Wildland Fire Reservists that the Federal Government can call up when needed, so we’re never short of personnel when we need them most.
2. Train every physically-capable Californian who lapses into unemployment in basic wildland firefighting. We can give struggling Californians a skill and a sense of purpose with a short, 4-week, training course.
3. We need federal laws that protect the civilian employment of wildland firefighters who are activated to fight large fires. We can model this on USERRA – which protects the jobs of Reservists and Guardsmen when they are called to military duty.