An amendment that Colorado Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet added to the pending 2012 Farm Bill increasing funding for bark beetle mitigation in the west, passed the Senate Tuesday.
Senator Udall says the amendment will provide forest managers with additional resources to remove beetle killed trees from forests, and allow sawmills to use beetle killed timber.
“This is a national imperative frankly, to find the resources to enhance the health of all of our forests whether hardwood forests in the east, or conifer forests in the Northeast or our mixed conifer forests in the west.”
The bipartisan amendment would double the amount of money included in the 2012 Farm Bill for beetle-mitigation efforts to 200 million dollars. The Senate could vote on its final version of the farm bill as early as Wednesday before sending it over to the House where it faces a less certain future.
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