Bush signs a bill he says will curb wildfire threat

Critics decry it as payback to timber industry
 

By Robert Gehrke
Associated Press

      WASHINGTON - President Bush signed legislation Wednesday that he said would help prevent "sudden and needless destruction" from wildfires like the California blazes that destroyed thousands of homes.
      "With the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, we will help to prevent catastrophic wildfires," Bush said in a signing ceremony at the Agriculture Department. He was joined by firefighters who fought the Western blazes.
      "We're proud to be standing with them up here," the president said. He said wildfires had destroyed 11 million acres over the past two years and killed 22 people in Southern California this year alone.
      Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., who sponsored the House version of the legislation, compared the measure to President Theodore Roosevelt's call for the establishment of the National Forest system 99 years ago this week.
      Idaho Sen. Michael Crapo, among the Republicans who negotiated the final version of the plan, said the bill creates "the potential for some of the most effective environmental legislation in decades.
      "Now we must implement this law with the same pragmatic thinking to realize its potential to protect our communities, heal our environment and ecosystems and create jobs in rural and forested areas," he said.
      Critics, however, decried it as a payback to the timber industry, which will get greater access to pristine stands of old-growth trees.
      "This is opening the gates to the timber industry," said Denise Boggs, executive director of Utah Environmental Congress. "The fires in California had nothing to do with national forests, period. This legislation is not going to prevent catastrophic fires. Teddy Roosevelt is turning in his grave that they dare use his name. It's not going to stop wildfires."
      The vast majority of wildfires occur on private land, Boggs added. So when wildfires break out next summer and the next, "Mr. Bush and his administration are going to have a difficult time explaining to the American people how this legislation is not going to be a panacea for wildfires."
      President Bush acknowledged that it wouldn't prevent all wildfires.
      "This law will not prevent every fire, but it is an important step forward," the president said. Decrying what he said has been a "misguided forest policy," Bush said that "a lot of people have been well-intentioned. They saved the trees. But they lost the forest. We want to save the forest."
      "We'll help save lives and property and we'll help protect our forests from sudden and needless destruction," Bush said.
      The Senate passed the bill by voice vote on Nov. 21, less than an hour after the House approved it, 286-140.
      For three years, a deadlock in the Senate had prevented the passage of legislation intended to speed forest treatment. But 15 raging fires driven by Santa Ana winds through Southern California prompted Democrats to compromise on the bill. The wildfires burned more than 750,000 acres, destroyed 3,640 homes, 33 businesses and 1,141 other structures.
      Even after the California fires, 2003 was slightly below average in terms of acres burned and nowhere near the severity of the 2000 and 2002 fire seasons. In the past year, 3.8 million acres have burned across the country. Twenty-eight firefighters died battling the blazes, according to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation.
      The bill - the first major forest management legislation in a quarter-century - is similar to Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative," which he proposed while touring a charred forest in Oregon in August 2002. The measure streamlines the approval process for projects to cut excess trees out of thick, overgrown forests or stands of trees killed by insect infestation.
      Other elements of the president's proposal had already been enacted through administrative actions.

      The Bush administration estimates roughly 190 million acres are at risk for a severe fire, an area the size of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming combined.
      Sean Cosgrove, a forest expert with the Sierra Club, said some good may come from the increased spending on forest treatment, but there is bound to be unnecessary logging in roadless areas and wildlife habitat as the timber companies try to harvest valuable old-growth trees.
      "The timber industry fought real hard for this bill for a reason and it's not because they want to remove brush and chaparral," Cosgrove said. "Through and through this thing is about increasing commercial logging with less environmental oversight."
      Since 1999, the timber industry has contributed $14.1 million to political campaigns, 80 percent of it going to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. Bush has received $519,350 from the industry in that period.
      The timber industry also spent $23.8 million on lobbying efforts since 2000, according to figures compiled by Political Money Line.
      The measure would authorize $760 million a year for thinning projects on 20 million acres of federal land, a $340 million increase. At least half of all money spent on those projects must be near homes and communities.
      The bill also creates a major change in the way that federal courts consider legal challenges of tree-cutting projects.
      Judges would have to weigh the environmental consequences of inaction and the risk of fire in cases involving thinning projects. Any court order blocking such projects would have to be reconsidered every 60 days.