Please call Senators Peter Fitzgerald and Dick Durban and ask them to oppose any amendment that supports the administration’s so-called Healthy Forest Initiative. Tell them to support instead, the National Fire Prevention Plan.

The Bush administration’s Healthy Forest Initiative, under the guise of fire prevention, overturns the most important environmental laws protecting our national forests from special interests. It also irresponsibly directs most of the fire prevention money to be spent logging our ancient forests in areas that are far from the communities that need fire protection. It allows the logging of even the largest, most fire-resistant trees despite evidence that years of just such logging have promoted the growth of small trees and brush that actually cause fires.

Tell the senators to oppose any amendment that suspends environmental laws or limits public involvement in forest management decisions. There is no need to suspend or weaken environmental laws to carry out legitimate fuel reduction to protect communities.

Tell them instead to make community protection from fire risks the priority under the National Fire Protection Plan. This program would put money directly into fireproofing homes and removing hazardous fuels from community protection zones. Tell them to support this program with meaningful funding - $2 billion a year for five years.

Details of the Bush plan follow:

Section 1 of the Bush plan provides a blanket exemption of all environmental analysis, public comment, and administrative appeal on millions of acres of federal forest lands with high fire risk. By mandating projects "notwithstanding the National Environmental Policy Act" the bill effectively suspends the fundamental law ensuring that federal agencies consider environmental impacts and involve the public in public land management. This NEPA exemption, coupled with the repeal of the Appeals Reform Act in section 3 means that the Forest Service could approve logging of old growth forests, road building in roadless areas, and other projects with absolutely no environmental analysis, public notice, or public comment.

Under the Bush Administration’s bill, the Forest Service would be completely free to ignore impacts on wildlife, air and water quality, roadless areas and other environmental values.

The bill also makes a mockery of citizen rights to seek judicial review, repealing the Appeals Reform Act, even in areas not considered high fire risk. This act was passed in 1992 to keep the Forest Service under former Bush administration from eliminating the appeals process.

The Bush administration has tried to blame environmentalists for forest fires. His initiative is couched in terms of eliminating red tape and streamlining decision making. However, the government’s own analysis by the Government Accounting Office found that of the government’s 1,671 fuel reduction projects, not one had been litigated and only one percent had been appealed.

This legislation is not primarily about fire prevention. It does not address key fire prevention issues such as the need to reduce fuels in the wildland-urban interface, but instead directs the majority of funds to the back-country and roadless areas that special interests want to log. It does not even mention the need for funding of the National Fire Prevention Plan. It promotes logging of old growth forests even in the relatively moist areas of the Pacific Northwest where fuel reduction is not considered a forest management issue. Most importantly, it overturns our environmental laws.

Please call your senators today.