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Senate Set to Vote on Fire Legislation That Fails to Protect CommunitiesWestern Senators Cut Deal With Bush AdministrationWashington DC – The U.S. Senate is expected to vote as early as this week on a version of the Bush Administration’s ill-named “Healthy Forests Initiative” that would do little or nothing to reduce the risk of wildfire to Western communities, remove citizen participation, interfere with the judicial system and increase commercial logging. Several Western Democrats reportedly cut a deal with Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist. The backroom deal, which would still be subject to changes in conference committee, stands in sharp contrast to a proposal by conservation groups that would focus aid on communities at risk from wildfire. “The Bush Administration’s plan would provide more help to timber companies than to fire-threatened and cash-starved communities,” said Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director. “The Administration has exploited the public’s fear of wildfires while doing little to alleviate these fears and make real progress to protect communities. They insist their plan helps communities, but they refuse to prioritize the funds to do so.” During a recent fund-raising swing through the West, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert boasted that the Healthy Forests Initiative is "an important bill for the forest industry" and called it "a common sense approach to make sure we can build the roads we have to build so this industry can start to come back." “Even if it were theoretically possible to fireproof a whole forest, the government would break the bank trying,” said Pope. “There is a better way to help communities reduce the risk of forest fires.” The bill does not focus scarce federal funding and resources where they would do the most good: in the Community Protection Zone adjacent to at-risk communities. Instead, the bill would continue to allow the Forest Service and Department of Interior to conduct misguided logging projects deep in the backcountry in the name of “fuel reduction,” and would allow logging of old-growth forests in roadless areas. An alternative proposal introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) would require that necessary resources are focused on responsible fuel reduction projects immediately around communities. A GAO report issued in May provided no evidence to support contentions by the Bush Administration and Congressional allies that fuel reduction efforts have been obstructed by conservationists. According to the report, the overwhelming majority of projects – 95 percent – go forward in a timely manner, even when questions are raised by citizens, industry, recreation groups, conservations or other interested parties. The GAO found that more than 95 percent of the 762 fuel reduction projects reviewed by the GAO – covering some 4.7 million acres of federal forest lands – were ready for implementation within the standard 90-day review period (724 out of 762). |
