Bush proposes less restrictions on logging in fire-prone forest

RUCH, Ore. -- President Bush, on a mountain peak blighted by wildfire, crumbled the dead black bark of a Douglas fir in his palm and challenged environmentalist critics of his new forest initiatives: "Come and stand where I stand."

The president proposed Thursday to end the government's "hands-off" policy in national forests and make it easier for timber companies to remove wood from 190 million acres of the most highly fire-prone forests.

"We need to understand if you let kindling build up and there's a lightning strike, you're going get yourself a big fire," Bush said.

Directing Air Force One to fly low and give him a view of the 471,000-acre Biscuit fire blazing in southeastern Oregon, Bush began a three-day Western swing to promote his forest plan and collect more than $5 million for Republican candidates in Oregon, California and New Mexico.

Environmentalists objected to the president's forestry plan, fearing it would open forests to loggers run amok. Demonstrators along Bush's motorcade route up Squires Mountain greeted him with signs that read: "More forests, less Bush."

But Bush was unwavering as, in cowboy boots, he kicked at the ashen soil of Squires Peak, where fire raged across 2,800 acres less than one month ago.

"What the critics need to do is come and stand where I stand," he said. "We are trying to bring a little common sense to forest policy."

Firefighter Cody Goodnough, who was at work looking for embers, gave his endorsement, telling Bush his approach "will make our job easier."

Forest thinning

Only limited forest thinning had been done on Squires because six years of environmental analysis and legal review, 830 pages of documentation, several appeals and two lawsuits tied up all but a fraction of the Bureau of Land Management's proposed work there.

Bush, who wants to limit reviews and appeals, saw for himself the difference thinning made at Squires Peak: On the side BLM could not get to was a blighted moonscape of dead tree trunks that fell away to black dust in his hand; on the other, surviving trees and regrowth already budding in the ash.

"This is the second fire site I've been to this summer and it's the same story," Bush said. "Had we properly managed our forests, the devastation caused would not have been nearly as severe as it has been and it's a crying shame."

But Amy Mall, forest policy specialist at The Natural Resources Defense Council, and other environmentalists accused Bush of taking this year's especially bad fire season as an excuse to make more federally grown wood available to timber companies.

With more than a month of fire season yet to go, 6 million acres have burned nationwide, twice as much as in the average summer.