WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is asking Congress for $760 million next year to remove more small trees and brush from national forests as part of a plan officials say would reduce the risk of wildfires.
The amount is at least $80 million more than current spending and would allow forest managers to treat up to 4 million acres at risk of fire _ an increase of about 300,000 acres over current efforts. The acreage is quadruple the amount treated in 2000, when a record 8 million acres of forest land burned.
The proposal, announced Wednesday, would fully fund a law passed by Congress last fall. Most of the thinning projects _ which include prescribed burns and removal of underbrush that serves as fuel for wildfires _ would be focused on areas near homes and communities.
``We think it's an appropriate response to the act,'' said Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary responsible for the administration's forest policy
The money requested as part of Bush's budget proposal for the next fiscal year beginning in October is separate from accounts to prepare for and put out fires, Rey said. It includes spending for both the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management.
Rey said the $760 million includes $80 million to $100 million in new spending, with the rest redirected from other areas.
Critics have called the new forest law a giveaway to the timber industry, saying that, in the name of wildfire prevention, it leaves old-growth trees and remote, roadless areas of forests at risk of logging.
Rey said much of the work will be done through prescribed burns which don't leave any timber for commercial logging.
``With regard to mechanical thinning, those projects will be done with a singular objective: to improve the health of the forests,'' Rey said. ``The amount of timber to be removed is incidental.''
