Bush Visits Arizona to Push Forest Thinning Plan

SUMMERHAVEN, Arizona, August 11, 2003 (ENS) – President George W. Bush took a break from his vacation today to rally support for his plan to reduce the threat of wildfires, known as Healthy Forests. The plan passed the House in May and the Senate Agricultural Committee in July, but faces sharp criticism from some Senate Democrats and environmentalists who say it is little more than a giveaway to the timber industry.

Today President Bush toured the Arizona community of Summerhaven, which was hit hard earlier this summer by what became known as the Aspen fire. This fire torched some 84,000 acres of the Coronado National Forest in July and destroyed 333 homes and businesses in Summerhaven.

"Our forests remain unprotected, our communities are vulnerable," he said. “We need to thin our forests in America.”

President George W. Bush addresses an audience in Summerhaven, Arizona with Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman at his side. (Photo courtesy The White House)

The Healthy Forests initiative, which has been adopted by Congressional supporters as the basis for the pending legislation, streamlines federal planning requirements for thinning forests on some 20 million acres of federal land and limits legal challenges to agency actions.

It has the support of the timber and paper industries, who say it will reverse the trend of mismanagement of public lands by the federal government.

Healthy Forests runs in tandem with several administrative rules proposed by the Bush administration to streamline forest thinning projects. These include programs, by which private firms are allowed to reap the financial benefits of hazardous fuels they remove under contract, known as forest stewardship programs.

The President said today that using private contractors “will save taxpayer money and help the economy.”

Critics say the forest stewardship program is logging under the guise of wildfire management. And they believe the vagueness of President’s plan and the broad authority it grants federal agencies will encourage logging of valuable timber, not the underbrush most in need of clearing, and that the bill’s revamping of judicial and environmental reviews cut out the public and are unnecessary and possibly illegal.

President Bush’s plan only addresses forest thinning on federal lands. But critics note that of the lands surrounding the communities, the wildland urban interface considered most at risk from wildfire, 85 percent is in private hands.

“The President's wildfire proposal would not have protected the communities he visited today,” said William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society a national conservation organization based in Washington, DC. “The administration's proposal neither focuses on communities nor provides additional funding to help make homes and towns safer across the West.”

Many forest experts believe it could cost up to $1 billion a year to do the required preventative wildfire fuel reduction efforts.

Some 190 million acres of public land are believed to need treatment for drought, insect infestation and potential fire. Last year the U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department treated some 2.2 million acres.

The Thomas fire burns across Arizona's White Mountains in June. (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

The Bush administration had requested an additional $289 million to fight wildfires, but Congress failed to act on this request before leaving for the August recess. Both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management - the two federal agencies tasked with managing much of the nation’s public lands - are expected to run out of money for wildfire measures before September 30, when the fiscal year ends.

These agencies will take funds from other programs to make up the shortfall, but this adds to the cycle of incomplete forest management projects.

Existing laws and regulations make it “very difficult” for the federal government to set hazardous fuel reduction priorities, Bush said today. The administration has lobbied hard with Congress to limit appeals of federal agency forest thinning projects and to streamline their environmental review.

But critics are concerned that giving broader authority to federal agencies while curtailing public oversight is misguided.

One rare area of consensus in the wildfire debate is that the federal government is largely responsible for the current situation.

Recent wildfires are the result of “backward forest policy,” Bush said.

The federal government aggressively suppressed wildfires throughout the past century, allowing mass accumulation of undergrowth that is a key fuel for wildfires. This was compounded by areas that were clearcut and replaced with closely spaced and highly flammable timber.

Although supporters insist that legal challenges to projects, in particular by environmental groups, have played a large role in the deteriorating health of the nation’s forests, a report released in May by the the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO), found 95 percent of the Forest Service fuel reduction projects it reviewed were ready for implementation within the standard 90 day review period.

The GAO study determined that only three percent of hazardous fuel reduction projects were challenged in court.

There are at least two rival bills within the Senate, both of which target funding at the wild land urban interface in addition to protecting old growth trees, protection not afforded by the President’s plan.

The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reports 37 active, large fires are burning in the Western United States today. Some two million acres have burned so far this year, compared to 5.4 million acres by this time in 2002. The fires in 2002 caused the deaths of 23 firefighters, and destroyed 842 structures.