Interior secretary boosts forest-thinning initiative

CHENEY, Wash. - Interior Secretary Gale Norton visited a wildlife refuge Friday to pitch President Bush's request for $760 million to reduce wildfire risk by thinning national forests and rangelands.

Norton watched workers at the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge torch piles of logging debris left over from mechanical thinning in the 16,700-acre sanctuary southwest of Spokane.

"We're really making a difference in those areas we are treating," Norton said.

Norton added some political sidetrips to her visit to Washington state, planning to attend Republican Lincoln Day dinners Friday night in Spokane and Saturday in Everett.

The funding is needed for the administration's "Healthy Forests" law that calls for reducing hazardous fuels that feed wildfires and improving forest and rangeland management, she said.

"It really is such a difference when you have a forest thinned out like this one," she said. "The bigger trees survive fires unless they're surrounded by smaller trees."

Environmental groups, however, said the law passed by Congress last fall would provide only about $30 million in new money for fuels reduction and signals renewed efforts to log federal lands.

Mike Petersen, executive director of The Lands Council, a Spokane-based conservation watchdog group, said the Bush forest initiative misses the mark.

"All in all, we believe it's yet another smoke screen for logging," Petersen said.

Petersen said 85 percent of the areas near communities that are most at risk of wildfire are not federal lands.

Studies conclude thinning and fuel reduction are most effective within 200 feet of structures, yet the bill provides no money for areas directly around buildings, Petersen said.

The bill would not have helped prevent last year's devastating Southern California wildfires because most of the acreage that burned was neither federal land nor forested, he said.

Conservationists fear the law would allow massive clearcutting of areas where there are insect infestations, he said.

Administration officials insist much of the work will be done through prescribed burns like the demonstration Friday, not logging.

"There are so many different areas we have to deal with that are in no way related to commercial logging," Norton said, "We're talking about the overall healthy forest initiative."

The administration hopes to ease environmentalists' concerns by using a community-based decision process, Norton said.

Jay Watson, wildland fire program director for the Wilderness Society in San Francisco, said his group supports fuels reduction around communities, but objects to thinning in more remote areas.

Thinning should be more intense near communities, in the so-called "urban-wildland interface," while more natural and environmental methods should be employed in the back country, he said.

"We're not sure the administration appreciates that distinction," Watson said. "It's not the same method across the entire landscape."