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GAO-03-689R 1 (2003-05-14)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaames0001 and id is 1 raw text is: I AmA Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 May 14, 2003 Congressional Requesters Subject: Forest Service: Information on Decisions Involving Fuels Reduction Activities Human activities-especially the federal government's decades-old policy of suppressing all wildland fires-have resulted in dangerous accumulations of brush, small trees, and other vegetation on federal lands. This vegetation has increasingly provided fuel for large, intense wildland fires, particularly in the dry, interior western United States. The scale and intensity of the fires in the 2000 wildland fire season made it one of the worst in 50 years. That season capped a decade characterized by dramatic increases in the number of wildland fires and the costs of suppressing them. These fires have also posed special risks to communities in the wildland-urban interface-where human development meets or intermingles with undeveloped wildland-as well as to watersheds and other resources, such as threatened and endangered species, clean water, and clean air. The centerpiece of the federal response to the growing threat of wildland fires has been the development of the National Fire Plan. This plan advocates a new approach to wildland fires by shifting emphasis from the reactive to the proactive-from attempting to suppress wildland fires to reducing the buildup of hazardous vegetation that fuels fires. The plan recognizes that unless these fuels are reduced, the number of severe wildland fires and the costs associated with suppressing them will continue to increase. Implementation of the National Fire Plan began in fiscal year 2001; full implementation of the plan is expected to be a long-term, multibillion-dollar effort. Reducing the buildup of hazardous forest fuels is typically accomplished through a number of treatment methods. Most often, federal land managers use controlled fires (prescribed burns) or mechanical treatments such as chainsaws, chippers, mulchers and bulldozers. Other means include using livestock grazing and herbicides. On federal lands, these activities are managed by five agencies: the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, all within the Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture. GAO-03-689R Forest Service Fuels Reduction

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