Senate Democrats oppose forest management legislation that would cut wildfires like those killing people in California

Washington Times:

As catastrophic wildfires cut a deadly swath through California, President Trump has demanded more aggressive forest management — and as luck would have it, Rep. Bruce Westerman has a bill to do exactly that.

What’s more, the Resilient Federal Forest Act of 2017 already has passed the House. The problem: The bill has almost no chance of being approved by the Senate, where it has languished for more than a year, thanks to opposition from Senate Democrats and anti-logging environmental groups.

“I would give it very low odds of passing,” said Mr. Westerman, Arkansas Republican.

For him, the bill’s likely failure is particularly disheartening, given what he knows about forests and fire — quite a lot, actually.

The only certified forester in the House — he worked as a forestry engineer before he was elected in 2014 — Mr. Westerman has made it his mission to clear a path through the legal and regulatory thicket standing in the way of projects to cull the overgrown federally managed woods.
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He said better forest management could have made a difference in Northern California, where dry, beetle-kill federal forests have fueled the Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in the state’s recorded history.

“Now if you look at Southern California, forest management’s not going to play a big role in preventing fires like the Woolsey Fire. There is some landscape management that could help mitigate those risks,” he said. “But in Northern California, where you’ve got the national forest, we could do a much, much better job of making not only the forests but the communities more resilient.”
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These techniques are apparently in use in Southern states with a huge forest industry and careful management of the forest.  You hardly ever hear of wildfires like those in California where environmentalist keep the dead wood in the forest and oppose clearing the underbrush.  The US has much better forest management in the region from Georgia to Arkansas which provides much of the construction lumber in this country.

The GOP Senators should be holding the Democrats' "feet to the fire" on this issue.