Environmentalists are firing back over criticism that they are to blame for the massive devastation resulting from wildfires across the tinder-dry West.
Utah Environmental Congress, a local conservation group that is often critical of the Forest Service, is one of 144 groups nationwide that signed a letter this week to U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth defending their position on forest management.
"The general public does not understand that environmentalists are not opposed to the true 'thinning' of forested areas to prevent large, hot fires near homes," said Denise Boggs, UEC executive director. "We are opposed to logging projects that are nowhere near homes, in roadless areas, but are promoted under the guise of fire prevention."
At issue is a recent congressional report that has environmentalists catching the heat for their appeals of timber sales designed to remove excess fuel — and prevent small fires from raging out of control.
A 2001 study by the General Accounting Office, the research arm of Congress, found that only 1 percent of the fire-related projects that the Forest Service had proposed during the study period were challenged nationwide. But in a recent revised finding, the GAO now says its original estimates were far too low and that environmental groups may be responsible for about half of all such delays.
In the Forest Service's Intermountain region that covers southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada and portions of Wyoming, Colorado and California, there have been 17 appeals filed since October 2000 on projects intended to clear brush and remove undergrowth, said Erin O'Connor, deputy communications director for the Mountain West's regional office of the Forest Service.
None of the fires burning in Utah are in areas where environmental appeals have delayed thinning, she added.
But that might not be the case in other areas of the West. A Forest Service study found that 73 percent of all timber proposals had been appealed over the past two fiscal years in New Mexico and Arizona. Arizona has suffered its worst fires in history this summer.
But the Forest Service report could also provide kindling for environmentalists' argument that appeals are not the problem. For example, in the Rocky Mountain Region, which includes fire-ravaged Colorado, only 11 percent of timber sales were appealed, the smallest percentage in the lower 48 states.
What has environmentalists all fired up is that the Bush administration has turned up the heat, accusing environmentalists of obstructing forest-thinning projects and thus endangering rural communities when brush conditions become thick, creating an explosive fire situation.
Environmentalists say their appeals have nothing to do with 'thinning' and burning of small trees. Rather, they want to stop logging of old growth forests and the loss of critical wildlife habitat.
In a letter to Bosworth, environmentalists say the real problem is that the Forest Service has chosen to focus its priorities on commercial logging rather than on protecting communities.
The National Fire Plan, established by Congress to guide Forest Service fire policy, has warned that fire policies "should not rely on commercial logging or new road building because the removal of large, merchantable trees does not reduce risk but increases it," the letter states.
Boggs said drought has intensified the wildfires in Utah.
"When fires start they burn fast and hot," she said. "Selective logging of old, fire-resistant trees, road building, fire suppression and livestock grazing have dramatically altered our National Forest ecosystems for the worse. The drought we are currently experiencing only compounds these stresses on national forests."
Environmental groups sometimes are blamed for the fires because they question forest management policies, she added.
"In reality, environmental groups do not challenge Forest Service projects that merely seek to reduce flammable undergrowth in areas near homes," she said. "The problem is the Forest Service rarely focuses on thinning underbrush because there is no money to be made from removing shrubs, saplings and weeds."
Removing the large, old-growth trees, she said, exposes the forest floor to more sun and wind and in turn increases the temperature on the ground, drying up the materials left behind. This results in faster rates of fire spread, hotter burns and erratic shifts in the speed and direction of fires. Increased sunlight reaching the forest floor also causes more rapid growth of flammable brush and weeds.
"I wish the Forest Service would quit lying to the public" about environmental positions, Boggs said.
Who's really lying? Boggs said people need only look to the court record to see who is telling the truth.
"More often than not the environmental community is successful in lawsuits. They are ruling that the Forest Service is violating the law," she said.

E-mail: donna@desnews.com