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Healthy Forests Task Force Named

WASHINGTON, DC, August 29, 2002 (ENS) - The Departments of Agriculture and Interior have named eight members of a new task force that will work to implement the Bush administration's Healthy Forests initiative.

On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced the names of senior officials assigned to work as a joint federal team on President Bush's healthy forest initiative. The team will work to meet the directive by the President to improve the regulatory process to ensure more timely decisions, greater efficiency, and better results in reducing the risk of catastrophic fires.

The departments will coordinate their efforts with Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Jim Connaughton. The team will begin its work immediately.

The team members from the Department of Agriculture/Forest Service include:

* Undersecretary for Conservation and Natural Resources Mark Rey
* Deputy Undersecretary for Natural Resources David Tenny
* Chief of U.S. Forest Service Dale Bosworth

The members from the Department of the Interior include:

* Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget Lynn Scarlett,
* Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Rebecca Watson
* Solicitor of the Interior Bill Myers
* Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Neal McCaleb
* Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks Craig Manson

The President's healthy forests initiative calls for more active management of public lands to reduce the risk of extreme wildfires. The 2002 fire season is already one of the worst in American history and may break all records.

Six million acres of public and private lands have burned this year, with more than a month of fire season remaining. This fire season has destroyed hundreds of millions of trees, hundreds of thousands of acres of endangered species habitat and thousands of homes and structures. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from communities all across the West.

Environmental groups and others critical of the Healthy Forests initiative warn that it could increase commercial logging on public lands by providing incentives for timber companies to clear brush and small trees.

Secretary Norton also announced the appointment of Allan Fitzsimmons as the Department of the Interior's Fuel Coordinator. In this newly created position, Fitzsimmons will coordinate and implement fuels treatment on lands managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. This appointment does not require confirmation by the U.S. Senate and is effective immediately.

"This new position supports our commitment to fully implement the President's "Healthy Forests" initiative and the 10 year Implementation Plan that was signed this past May by the Western Governors, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, and me," Norton said. "Allan Fitzsimmons has a solid reputation as a problem-solver, having worked on a wide range of natural resource issues in and out of government service, and I welcome him to my team."

Fitzsimmons will coordinate fuels treatment analysis and strategies among Interior agencies and work in concert with the U.S. Forest Service. He will represent the Interior Secretary in consultation with state, county, and local officials, as well as with other stakeholders when making land use management decisions involving fuels treatment.

From 1983 to 1985, Fitzsimmons served as a special assistant to the deputy director of the National Park Service. From 1985 to 1989, he was assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks at the Interior Department, and he was deputy under secretary for policy, planning and development at the Department of Energy from 1989 to 1992.