Sept. 6, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- With forest fires a growing concern, a bill in the House of Representatives to expand a U.S. Forest Service program that finances fire prevention efforts would allow the Forest Service to pay for hazardous fuel reduction projects with timber from national forests.

Many environmental groups concerned with forest health are alarmed and the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and American Lands Campaign say large trees that should not be removed for fire prevention purposes instead will be given as payment. The groups also worry about the Forest Service's track record and accuse it of massively misdirected fuel reduction efforts in complying with a National Fire Plan put in place a year ago.

Furthermore, the groups charge the trees for services payment plan can produce extra money that will be spent on Forest Service projects at the discretion of local forest managers and without adequate agency oversight.

Forest Service officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told United Press International the trees to be used as payment would be carefully selected by the agency.

A senior fire management official with the agency admitted the hazardous fuels reduction program was not fully up to speed. The official cited the 12 to 18 months needed to develop and implement the plans, following an increase in funding from $85 million to $209 million in September of 2000.

As for local agency control of money, an agency official said excess cash produced by a variety of concessions have been controlled and used by local administrators for quite some time.

H.B. 2646, the Agricultural Act of 2001, would establish the timber-as-payment for the hazardous fuels reduction program for six years and specifies the trees for fuel reduction contracts, which could run through 2017, must be done in accord with the National Fire Plan.

Having the Forest Service pay for services with trees is not completely new. Two years ago, Congress authorized a pilot project program at 26 locations that allowed the agency to try the idea of using trees to pay for land management work.

Critics complain that pilot program has not been evaluated and the trees for services approach should not be extended for 16 years without such an assessment. A Forest Service official told UPI the evaluation is getting underway and will last for several years.

The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Larry Combest, R-Texas, strongly supports the bill that has come from his committee. Combest spokesman Keith Williams told United Press International: "This provision is not for timber sales. This is for clearing away essentially debris. This is timber, fallen trees. This is timberland which is not anywhere near the quality that would make it worthwhile for somebody to use this for lumber. This is small-diameter trees."

Combest said the focus of the bill is an attempt to get a handle on the wildfires.

"Let's not add to the danger here by having a very blind, slavish adherence to just some bumper sticker view of some folks, who want to call themselves environmentalists, but are not looking at the health of the forest, are not looking at the simple question that they need to answer," Combest said.

"Would they just rather burn the forest to save the trees?' And that's really where they're coming down to," Combest said.

Spokesmen for several environmental groups said they are not opposed to the concept of hiring outside contractors to perform land management tasks, often referred to as "stewardship end result contracts." What concerns them is the major motivation of many contractors is to obtain as much fiber as possible, thereby leading to the removal of inappropriately large trees. Because the hazardous fuels reduction effort involves millions of acres there potentially would be a large impact.

Sean Cosgrove, Sierra Club forest policy specialist, told UPI: "What happens to stewardship contracting is that the projects may be designed to produce good ecological benefits, but if you're paying the contractor through the amount of fiber they can remove from the forest, then they have the incentive to remove large trees and to not get the best result in doing ecological restoration or producing better results in the forest."

Cosgrove said the forest service has a bad record with accountability and "projects that are ostensibly designed for ecological improvement but turn into timber sales."

A regional director for timber sales with the Forest Service told UPI: "There would be a prescription for thinning that set some diameter limits. They wouldn't be taking big trees."

The environmental groups also are concerned the ability of the Forest Service to generate income by trading trees for services could get out of hand. Steve Holmer, campaign coordinator of American Lands Campaign, told UPI: "Just a few years ago we got rid of a very similar program called the purchase of road credit program where (the Forest Service) traded trees to build roads. One result of that is that they overbuilt the road system and they've got an $8.4 billion backlog of road maintenance. They took that authority and they went wild with it."

Williams pointed out there are legislative controls he believes would be sufficient. "They have to do this within the restriction of the National Fire Plan. They can't go in and say, 'We're going to clear-cut millions of trees or millions of acres.' So that may be the control that maybe somebody as an objective observer would be looking at in this. If somebody gets out of (the National Fire Plan) they're going to be prosecuted."

Mike Leahy, a forest expert with Defenders of Wildlife, said: "We don't have a problem with the concept of stewardship contracting ... The problem is with the way the proposal is being presented. Like so many of the ideas in forestry, it's getting twisted by people who are interested in logging. The biggest problem of the goods for services proposal is that it would allow the Forest Service to essentially pay for restoration work directly with trees."

It is unclear what the Senate will propose in the area of trees as payment for services in clearing out hazardous fuels. Seth Boffeli, spokesman for Sen. Tom Harkin, D- Iowa, chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, told UPI, "I think it would be fair to say that there is some concern over this part of the House bill ... concern how this would impact the environment, allowing more forestry into certain areas. It is possible that the Senate would go in a different direction."

The House bill is due to reach the floor next week. The Senate hopes to have a bill out of committee by early October.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.