Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called for a revolution of timber sales in U.S. forests this week to reduce wildfire risk and raise revenue for the U.S. government.
“We want to get back into actually harvesting timber,” Burgum said Thursday evening at a meeting of the Western Governors’ Association in Scottsdale, Arizona. “When [companies are] there, when they’re working, that’s part of the forest management that we need to reduce the fire load that exists in these forests.”
A former Republican governor of North Dakota, Burgum said Interior’s Bureau of Land Management spent seven times more money fighting fire this year than the government spent on timber leasing.
“When we spend money on fighting fire, we’re spending your money. We’re spending taxpayer money fighting fires,” he said. “When we’re doing a timber lease, guess what? We’re making money for all of you.”
