(President) Bush Seeks $867 Million Budget for Forest Thinning

Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 2/4/05 | Reuters - Washington

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration will ask Congress to increase funding to $867 million in fiscal year 2006 for a plan to help reduce the risk of wildfires in federal forests, a senior administration official said on Thursday.

The U.S. Agriculture Department's Forest Service division and the Interior Department, which work together to fight forest fires, received $811 million in the current budget year for the forest management plan.

Environmentalists have criticized the program as a way to give logging companies more access to timber under the guise of forest protection.

The proposed increase will be part of the federal budget request that the White House will submit on Monday to Congress, which will spend months debating and modifying the budget. The 2006 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

The forest management program, approved by Congress in 2003, aims to cut procedural delays at federal agencies and develop new ways to reduce the threat of wildfires on 10 million acres of fire-prone forest over several years.

Mark Rey, the U.S. Agriculture Department's undersecretary of natural resources, told reporters about $492 million of the requested $867 million in 2006 would be used to remove hazardous underbrush from more than 4 million acres of land. The rest would be spent to improve landscapes and wildlife habitats.

Rey said the program would focus on thinning forests near houses. By the end of fiscal year 2006, more than half of areas treated will be where people live.

This will result in the removal of more wood products -- ranging from biomass to commercial grade lumber -- because prescribed burning programs would be used less often, he said. In 2004, 277,000 acres, or about 5 percent of the 4 million acres treated, had lumber or wood products removed.

Rey and Lynn Scarlett, assistant secretary of the interior, declined to comment on other details of the 2006 budget for their agencies.

[Next_Time_NJ]

Look at all that preeeeetttty paper!

[RockinRight]

Why the hell are we spending government our money on this crap?

[q_an_a]

lumber companies and paper companies are doing a terrible job in explaining that their mills will only handle small logs. they gave up on Old Growth trees years ago. So thinning is what this is about not big old trees. Someone needs to help the paper and tree people get a real BLOG.

[bbenton]

I love the tree huggers. I say never cut any wood or manage any forest because it wouldn't be natural. We should just let hundreds of thousands of acres a year burn and lose the wood totally because it's only natural. Then we should live in mud huts and wear loincloths because progress is bad. (sarcasm) Don't mistake the hard core tree huggers' agenda with preservation. They are anti progress pure and simple.

[standupfortruth]

There he goes again putting human life in front of our environment! How dare he?

[gov_bean_ counter]

Environmentalists have criticized the program as a way to give logging companies more access to timber under the guise of forest protection.

Looks like a win/win to me. Actually this supports the assertion that for the enviro weenies, it isn't about the environment.

[Nuzcruizer]

What bugs me is that government our money is needed for this. This amounts to nothing more than subsidizing the pulp and paper/lumber industries. This "project" should be self funding. As far as tree huggers go, --- idiots. Old rotting growth is bad- new green lush growth is good. Old rotting growth releases the greenhouse gasses it absorbed when it rots OR burns- new growth absorbs greenhouse gasses which is GOOD for the enviroment. Old growth makes good paper and wood chip products, plus it creats JOBS, which even those lunatic tree huggers need. Using old growth controls insect populations which destroys huge tracts of forrest every year, so trees infested with these insects are better used for lumber than to be left to rot and present a fire hazzard. It's called forrest management, which helps keep our forrests a healthy and productive renewable resourse for future generations to harvest. It is proven without doubt that managed forrests are much healthier and grow faster than unmanaged old growth forrests, and do a better job absorbing pollutants (natural and man made) that old growth unmanaged forrests are, and with wildlife management are better ablwe to sustain healthy wildlife as well. After all, I want my deer to be healthy when I shoot it.