Senators to examine Clinton administration’s role in western fires

John Hughes

Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2000 | 4:47 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Western senators said Tuesday they will examine whether the Clinton administration was adequately prepared to fight wildfires and whether administration policies have put more public land at risk.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, questioned whether the administration underfunded fire prevention to secure money for acquiring lands for environmental protection.

"I'm sure that at the time the president had money taken from these fire budgets he didn't understand that his lands legacy would be millions of acres of charred trees and lost wildlife habitat," Craig said.

Craig said he would hold hearings on the administration's role in the fires in coming weeks in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's forests and public land management subcommittee, which he chairs.

An administration official said there is no evidence that administration policies have caused the fires.

A bipartisan congressional report last week showed little or no connection between wildfires and the decline in timber harvests on federal land, Agriculture Department Undersecretary Jim Lyons said.

"Politicizing the situation and trying to turn it into a debate over administration policies is not conducive to our working together," said Lyons, who oversees the Forest Service.

The Agriculture and Interior departments as early as next week are expected to ask President Clinton to request roughly $1.2 billion from Congress to repair lands damaged by the fires this year and prevent fires next year.

Western senators made the criticisms on the Senate floor during their first day back from more than a one-month recess.

The senators told of going home to their states and seeing smoke from fires that have burned nearly 6.6 million acres across the nation. Some said Clinton policies, such as a proposal to ban road building in 43 million acres of national forests, would only worsen the fire threat in coming years.

"I want to express my deep concerns over the mismanagement of the national forest system that's led to one of the worst fire systems in the history of the United States of America," said Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyoming.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the administration has made no plans to reduce the thick growth of trees and brush to reduce the fire risk in forests.

"It's been a fear that if you clean this up, you're logging," he said.

Environmentalists accuse the GOP of trying to use the fires to boost national forest logging levels, which have declined about 70 percent over the last decade.

A Washington state environmental group, the Pacific Biodiversity Institute, released a study Tuesday that found only 38 percent of the land that was burned was in roadless or wilderness areas.

On the Net: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee: http://www.senate.gov/ 7/8 energy/

Forest Service: http://www.fs.fed.us/