Posted: 08/11/2003
Senate Delays Action While Western U.S. Burns
Decades of Federal Mismanagement Increased Forest Fire Hazard, Says NCPA
DALLAS, TX (August 11, 2003) – As President Bush is set to survey a fire-ravaged community in Arizona today, National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett says federal mismanagement of our national forests is to blame for the annual toll that wildfires have wreaked upon the nation.
“Decades of mismanagement of our national forests have left them in decline and like a tinderbox, ready to explode,” said Burnett. “The president’s Healthy Forests initiative is a long overdue start in correcting the problem.”
The U.S. Forest Service estimates that more than 190 million acres of public land is at risk of catastrophic fires. Fully 60 percent of national forest land is unhealthy and faces an abnormal fire hazard. Too many trees and too much brush combined with bureaucratic regulations and lawsuits filed by environmental extremists have hampered the ability of professional foresters to manage the forests properly for the multiple goals of wildlife habitat, recreation and timber production. For instance:
- Timber harvests have plunged more than 75 percent from 12 billion board feet per year to less than 4 billion board feet per year.
- Road building has declined from 2,000 miles per year in the 1980s to less than 500 miles in the late 1990s.
- As a result, historically large ponderosa pines which grew in strands of 20-55 trees per acre now grow (and burn) in densities of 300-900 trees per acre.
- This has resulted in an increase in wildfires, from 25 per year in 1984 to more than 80 a year in recent years.
“In order to prevent the unnecessary loss of life and waste of the public’s natural resources, emergency powers are needed that waive, for a temporary period, certain laws and regulations that might otherwise slow or hamper prompt action to lessen the likelihood of future catastrophic fires,” said Burnett. “The dangerous conditions that we find the national forests in took decades to create and will take years to fix, but this is a good first step.”