National Forests Fall Victim to Firefighting

But while both sides advocate removing the small trees that are the least fire resistant and ecologically valuable, federal officials face a problem. The logging industry has little interest in hauling away only skinny trees that will produce little economically.

Jim Matson, a southwest-area consultant for the Portland, Ore.-based American Forest Resource Council, said the timber industry "can't afford to subsidize the nation's forests."

These timber sales come at a cost: The Forest Service's timber sale program lost $947 million between 1992 and 2001, says the public watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Federal officials are scaling back elsewhere: Just this month they decided to postpone a year-long project aimed at protecting the Anderson Mesa in Arizona's Coconino National Forest because they did not have the money. "It's common knowledge a lot of dollars have been reprogrammed to address the fuels-reduction issue," said Carol Holland, the Coconino National Forest's analysis group leader.

A General Accounting Office report this month said the Forest Service and Interior Department took more than $2.7 billion from other programs to fund fire suppression over the past five years, which "resulted in canceled and delayed projects, strained relationships with state and local agency partners, and difficulties in managing programs."

Sean Cosgrove, the Sierra Club's land protection program's Washington representative, and other environmental advocates like to cite the work of Forest Service scientist Jack D. Cohen, who concluded after many experiments that the best fire prevention consists of clearing a quarter-mile area around people's homes. Cohen argues that if government officials pursued this course, they would stop fires from burning residential areas because there would be no fuel to feed the flames.

But many politicians reject this idea, saying forest fires have become so big they stretch for miles regardless of the fuel in their path. And some Forest Service officials say even if human communities survive fires, these natural disasters can destroy critical habitat and must be fought, no matter what.

To the dismay of people like Galbreath, the government is moving ahead with many projects.

The $1.2 million timber sale she is fighting at East Rim will produce 8 million board feet of lumber from 146,000 trees that are nine inches or less in diameter, but it will also fell 7,000 trees that are 18 to 24 inches in diameter, and 400 of the massive old-growth trees that are 24 inches or more. Initially proposed under President Bill Clinton to restore the forest and promote recreation, the logging plan was set aside for several years but revived a few weeks after President Bush took office.

Jonathan Beck, the environmental coordinator for the North Kaibab Ranger District, said the sale will not only guard against fires but also maintain old-growth trees and improve the habitat for the northern goshawk, a raptor, and its prey.

"It's a forest health project," Beck said, adding that the old-growth trees slated for cutting are being attacked by dwarf mistletoe, a natural parasite that eventually kills trees. "The strategy of thinning is pretty simple: You're taking out the smaller, denser trees so you're allowing the larger trees to grow."

At the moment, the East Rim sale is at a standstill until Sept. 1 because the Justice Department has signed off on Galbreath's request for a restraining order and sent it to an Arizona federal judge for approval. But the Forest Service is moving forward with other thinning projects.

Rick Miller, the Flagstaff manager for the Arizona Game and Fish habitat program, said the pressure to push through such projects has exacted some costs.

"The pressure is to get the work done," Miller said. "Right now, almost everything is being driven by the fire risk reduction. Some of it is very reasonable. And some of it's a problem."