Sep 12, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Implementation of the National Fire Plan, designed to reduce damage caused by forest fires, is coming under criticism from the U.S. General Accounting Office for lacking coordination and accountability, while environmental groups say its hazardous fuel reduction efforts are misdirected.

Defenders of the plan's implementation point to the thicket of regulations that must be negotiated to put it into effect and say that it is not surprising that a year after a $3 billion dollar infusion of federal funds that work is going slowly. Matters will not be helped by a billion-dollar cut in program funding President George Bush and the Senate have proposed this year.

About 5,000 square miles of forest burn in the United States each year, on average. About 10,000 square miles burned in 2000. The main features of the plan are firefighting preparedness, rehabilitation and restoration for damaged areas, hazardous fuels reduction and community education. GAO testimony before the House Subcommittee on Forest and Forest Health accused the five federal agencies responsible for the plan of clinging to old patterns of administration and failing to establish the relationships among the five necessary to make the fire plan work successfully.

Barry Hill, director of natural resources and environment at the GAO, testified "the five federal land management agencies cannot ensure, among other things, that they are allocating funds to the highest-risk communities and ecosystems, are adequately prepared to fight wildland fires in 2001 and can account accurately for how they spend the funds and what they accomplish with them."

A written report that Hill submitted said, "Neither the Forest Service nor Interior is fully prepared to fight future wildland fires." Inconsistent accounting in different agencies has left Congress with no consistent basis for holding Interior and the Forest Service accountable, Hill said.

The five agencies involved are the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Together, these five agencies have a million square miles of "burnable acres," according to the GAO, 40 percent under the BLM and 28 percent under the Forest Service. The Forest Service has 10,750 personnel involved in fire preparedness, about double the total of the other four agencies combined, for a total national staff of about 16,000.

The GAO also criticized the agencies for failing to agree on a definition of the critical wildland/urban interface so work can be coordinated among and within the agencies. Critics claim the effort to reduce the hazardous fuels build-up, the essential cause of fires that become very large and devastating, is not focused enough near populated areas, hence the importance of defining the urban/wildland interface.

The senior Forest Service official, speaking to United Press International on the condition of anonymity, said, "The truth be told, none of the federal wildland agencies -- BLM, the Park Service, Fish and Wildlife, BIA and Forest Service -- have a definition." Land and forest conditions are so variable it is very difficult to come up with a uniform national definition of urban/wildland interface, the official said.

Local units are going to be able to determine their own definitions, based on local conditions, the official added. "Anything that we would set up at the national level would hamper local ground level. Our discussion has always been the same in the national office: This is something that needs to be developed at the ground level through the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) process and not have a national direction try to determine the ideal situation for all land types," the official said.

The most controversial aspect is the implementation of the hazardous fuels reduction part of the plan. Critics say the work of clearing out the fuels should be done closer to the populated areas. Paradoxically, the large efforts devoted to suppressing fire in America's forests, coupled with logging practices that have left a lot of debris on the forest floor, have led to forests unnaturally choked with wood that feeds intensely hot fires.

While fire is a natural part of forest ecology, it is beneficial only when it comes through and leaves most of the trees alive. In a natural situation with relatively frequent fires, fuels do not build up and most trees survive. With large fuel buildups fires reach into the crown of the trees and destroy the forest.

According to the senior official in the Forest Service, who is involved with the hazardous fuels reduction program, the national program was slated to treat 1.8 million acres of forest with hazardous fuels build-up, but probably will succeed in clearing 1.3 million acres this year. The problem has been the sudden increase in funding from $85 million to $209 million for projects that take a long time to plan, the official said.

"There is no way to suddenly come up with a greater percentage of wildland /urban interface (fuel reduction) because that wasn't the emphasis being given to it at that time," the official said.

Next year the percentage devoted to the urban/wildland interface will be higher, according to the official.

"Will it still be as much as people would like? No. It's about a year to a year-and-a-half planning lag to be able to bring in the emphasis where you need it to be."

Within two years the majority of acres that should be treated will be on track and next year about 40 percent of the program will be in wildland/urban interface, the official added.

But Michael Francis, a spokesperson for the Wilderness Society, remains critical. "Congress, when it started putting all the additional money into fire wanted the Forest Service to go in and work on the wildland/urban interface areas and trying to reduce the risk of high-intensity fires in those areas that threaten people's property and lives. In the first two years of the program, the majority of programs they have done are not in the wildland/urban interface zone," Francis told UPI.

Sean Cosgrove, a forest policy expert for the Sierra Club expressed similar concerns. Some forestry experts supported the Forest Service version of why there are delays.

According to Scott Stevens, a professor of fire science in wildland areas at the University of California at Berkeley, it takes two to three years to do project level planning, to get all the documentation in order and to take full advantage of the new funding, if the National Environmental Policy Act process is correctly followed.

Hal Salwasser, dean of the forestry school at Oregon State University agreed the urban/wildland fuels reduction problem is intense, but said following existing laws was slowing up the planning, approval and implementation process.

"Where the environmental groups are correct is that not enough work is going on in what they call the urban/wildland interface. ... From a financial liability, a political liability, risk to human life and loss-of-property point of view there's no question in anybody's mind that the activity needs to be going on in that urban interface," he said.

Salwasser pointed to the process. "First what has to happen is they have to streamline their planning. They're spending way too many resources doing the planning, and the planning is far too convoluted because they're trying to come up with plans that are absolutely defensible against all kinds of attacks from regulatory agencies or litigators who don't want any kind of activity to go on."

Salwasser is a former regional director for the Forest Service.

This week there were 12 large fires burning in the United States, affecting a total of 300 square miles.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.