Last summer, fire tore through the
Pacific Northwest.
In southern Oregon and northern California, the Biscuit fire burned for weeks and ultimately spread over 449,965 acres. Other fires throughout the region polluted the air, contaminated ground water and threatened homes and businesses.
Nationally, burns covered more than 7.1 million acres of what had once been forest and rangeland. Hundreds of communities were affected, 21 firefighters were killed and tens of thousands of families were evacuated from their homes, according to a United States Department of Agriculture fact sheet. It was the worst fire season in recent history.
In response to the devastation left behind by the fires, and the desire to avoid a similar situation in the future, President George W. Bush introduced the Healthy Forest Initiative to Congress in August. The plan is a four-part process that the Bush administration calls “common sense” and “sensible.”
According to Bush administration officials, successful implementation of the plan would change how forests and rangelands are managed in regard to fuel treatment.
The plan would quickly open doors for agencies to enter into areas and perform logging exercises in the name of fire fuel reduction. It would remove many of the overlapping environmental laws and guidelines that mandate review of the impact of logging. Instead, it would develop an accelerated system for weighing the short-term risks and the long-term benefits of logging an area in the name of fuel reduction. HFI would also remove the existing appeals process, which currently allows citizens and the administration to place hold orders on questionable timber sales.
“We are trying to expedite our processes in order to prevent catastrophic damage to our forests and rangelands by returning these lands to good health, which will protect lives, property and home,” Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in a statement. “Needless delay closes the narrow window of opportunity we have to do essential fuel treatment work between fire seasons. Forest ecologists and the land managers know the truth: We cannot afford to wait any longer. If we fail to act, we will continue to see millions of acres of forests go up in smoke every year.”
HFI would affect federal forested areas, wilderness and rangelands bordering communities and high-risk areas like watersheds. These areas would be opened to logging agencies and other fire reduction crews, who would travel into the area and remove fuel — trees, brush and snags — that could turn a small natural fire into a roaring uncontrollable burn.
Hal Salwasser , Oregon State University forestry dean, said the main goal of the plan was to reduce fire hazards in areas where a burn could threaten a community or other important resource. Salwasser said the HFI was a step in the right direction but did not go far enough. He said forest systems have been managed under a no-fire policy, and because of it, small amounts of fuel that accumulate each year have not been removed from the forest floor, leaving piles of combustible material that are essentially tinder boxes waiting for a spark.
“Fire is a natural part of a ecosystem, but the ecosystem we have created is not natural for fire,” Salwasser said.
Rod Nichols, Oregon Department of Forestry Public Affairs manager, said federal forestlands in Oregon are facing a forest health crisis due to a lack of management.
“Lawsuits and appeals brought by environmental groups against nearly every timber sale proposed on forest service lands have impaired the agency’s ability to thin forests and maintain health,” Nichols said. “As a result, stands have become overly dense.”

Nichols said forest management on privately-owned and state-owned land has been much more successful than on federal lands.
“The owners are motivated to thin their forests and keep the stands healthy and resistant to disease, insects and fire because they are dependent on these lands for a livelihood,” he said. “It is similar on state-owned forestlands. Oregon Department of Forestry actively manages its 800,000 acres of state forests to maintain good forest health.”
Not everyone believes the HFI and increased levels of management are good things for forestlands, however.
Rick Gorman of the Native Forest Council, a nonprofit organization seeking to “end all industrial extraction on natural lands,” said no amount of logging, even in the name of fire prevention, will be acceptable on public lands until commercial logging is put to an end and the USDA Forest Service is restructured.
“We’re talking about the last vestiges of natural wild land,” Gorman said. “They’d take every last tree if they could. We cannot let them into the areas because we cannot trust them to act only in the name of fire prevention — and not their own interest.”
Gorman’s not alone in his distrust. Thanks to a coalition of activists, this summer’s battle over the Healthy Forest Initiative may not be easily won.