Management practices criticized for raising fire danger

EAGAR, Ariz. -- Fires ripping through eastern Arizona are fueling a growing debate over the best way to manage the nation's forests.

"Mother Nature is saying to Arizona right now, saying to the West that we've got to clean up these forests," Gov. Jane Hull said as she toured the fires that have forced thousands of people to flee their homes.

As the young fire season grows worse each day, government's land-management practices and environmentalists who sued to block logging efforts are being blamed for the onrushing flames.

For decades, the government's policy was to knock down forest fires as quickly as possible. As a result, a 2000 report by the General Accounting Office found that, on average, forests had four times the number of trees as they did when fire was allowed to run its course.

Last year, the Forest Service said forest conditions "increase the probability of large, intense fires beyond any scale yet witnessed."

But there is a bitter dispute over how to address the problem. Environmental groups claim that hacking down trees to lessen the chance of huge, destructive wildfires only helps logging companies, not the forests.

Over the weekend, Hull and others said that argument has led to the charred landscape that used to be pine trees in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

The policies "that say we don't need to log, we don't need to thin our forests are absolutely ridiculous," said Hull, a Republican. "I for one have had it."

Show Low resident Marc Ridenour, who was forced to leave his home because of the fires, is angry at environmental groups.

"They helped set the stage for this," he said. "Spotted owl huggers were the grand architects of this catastrophe."