Governors from western states call for forest changes

SAN DIEGO - Western governors urged federal authorities Thursday to do more to reduce the chance of major wildfires like those that charred millions of acres last summer.

Federal agencies that manage the nation's forests should take additional steps including more efforts to remove brush and smaller trees that provide fuel for fires, members of the Western Governors' Association said at their winter meeting.

The recommendation, which is part of a resolution the association is expected to adopt unanimously Friday, conflicts with the view of environmentalists who argue that removing smaller trees and debris will lead to what they consider excessive logging in national forests.

But Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, where fires burned about 1.3 million acres this summer, said failure to thin the forests has created an unsafe situation.

''The current forest health policy is not working and I contend it went up in smoke this season,'' Kempthorne said.

In its consensus resolution the governors' association maintains that millions of acres of federal forests are in ''poor ecological health and are at an unacceptable risk of wildfire, insect infestation and disease.''

In all, about 40 million to 65 million acres of U.S. forest are at moderate to high risk of fire, mostly in the western United States, said Colin Hardy, a Forest Service researcher who attended the two-day conference in San Diego.

''We've probably had in terms of wildfires the worst year since 1910,'' said Kempthorne, the chairman of the association.

Wildfires burned more than 6.5 million acres this year. The 10-year average is about 3 million acres, and the low is about 1.5 million, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

The Clinton administration authorized an additional $2.9 billion to hire more firefighters and buy more equipment and to remove brush and small trees in response to this summer's fires, said Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathis.

But that won't address the conflict over the extent to which the United States thins federal forests to ease fire danger.

Timber industry groups have criticized the Clinton administration for restricting the practice of thinning forests, which they say has led to a dangerous buildup of fuel for fires. Environmentalist groups argue that natural fires in early spring can clear the debris that fuels large scale blazes.

''The challenge is to find the appropriate mix of the two,'' Mathis said.

The governors of Alaska, Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming attended the two-day meeting, which also dealt with improving access to health care and high-technology in the rural west.