LOS ANGELES, May 30 (UPI) -- Forestry officials on Friday announced a series of controversial federal regulations that have been established to streamline the approval process for forest-thinning projects.
The Interior, Commerce and Agriculture departments announced that "priority" fuels-reduction projects and the reclamation of previously burned areas would be allowed to go forward without further review.
"These new tools will reduce the layers of unnecessary red tape and procedural delay that prevent agency experts from acting quickly to protect communities and our natural resources from devastating wildfires," said Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman. "These common sense approaches to restoring forest and range-land health protect communities from the risk of wildfires and are an important part of President Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative."
In a statement, the Bush administration said efforts were being made to prevent another disastrous wildfire season like last summer's when almost 7 million acres burned in the drought-stricken West. Last year's devastating fire season prompted President Bush to call for an acceleration of "treatment" projects that remove tracts of forest that have become overgrown.
Environmentalists quickly reacted with disappointment over what they see as the continuing Bush strategy of opening the door to treatment projects that provide more benefit for loggers than they do for residents of forest communities.
Wilderness Society analyst Mike Anderson said the Bush policy should be called "No Tree Left Behind," while the Montana organization's president, William Meadows, said the policy should be aimed at creating buffers around communities rather than logging projects deep in old-growth forests.
"It comes as no surprise that the administration is again announcing important regulatory changes on a Friday afternoon in an attempt to hide the negative impact of today's announcement from the American public," Meadows said in a statement.
"Unfortunately, these proposals do not address the most important issue -- protecting people and communities from the risk for wildfire," he said. "Instead, they are based on the erroneous assumption that public participation in the management of their National Forests is a problem that must be eliminated."
Under the new rules, "priority fuel treatments (prescribed fire and thinning) and past fire restoration (reseeding and planting) projects will proceed without the need for further individual analyses and lengthier documentation." The priority projects were determined after a review of around 2,600 proposals.
In addition, future public debate over the merits of individual projects will be encouraged to begin earlier in the approval process in order to avoid litigation down the road, and will establish an alternate approval process under the Endangered Species Act for projects involving areas that include the habitat of rare creatures.
The "alternative consultation process" is aimed at eliminating duplicative reviews of projects that are not expected to have an adverse effect on either endangered species or their habitat.
"It will empower on-the-ground resource experts to do what they do best, while not reducing protection for listed species or habitats," promised Commerce Secretary Dan Evans.
