**Statement of Mark Rey\
Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment\
United States Department of Agriculture\
And\
P. Lynn Scarlett\
Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget\
United States Department of the Interior\
Before\
the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources\
Concerning\
2004 Fire Preparedness\
May 11, 2004**

**INTRODUCTION**

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity
to meet with you today. Since the Department of the Interior and the
Department of Agriculture work closely together in fire management and
in implementing the National Fire Plan, it is appropriate to use one
statement to inform you on preparations for the 2004 fire season and our
long term efforts to restore fire adapted ecosystems.

For much of the twentieth century, wildland fires were generally thought
to be bad for the environment, for timber resources, and for communities
that were impacted. As a consequence, fires were suppressed as soon as
possible. The resulting lack of fire had an unintended consequence
across large areas of the landscape where fire had been a frequent
phenomenon. Over time, the amount and structure of shrubs and trees
increased. This build up of fuel, coupled with other factors such as
long term drought, has led to increasing concerns about the overall
wildland condition and particularly the health of our forests and
rangelands.

The President's Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) helped us tackle our
gridlock of process that was impeding our restoration of fire adapted
ecosystems, including treatment of hazardous fuels. HFI resulted in the
development of a number of administrative tools and included a request
for congressional help to further reduce procedural barriers. On
December 3, 2003, the President signed into law the Healthy Forests
Restoration Act of 2003 (HFRA), giving Federal agencies additional tools
needed to implement the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy and
Implementation Plan. Its passage sent a strong message of bipartisan
support for reducing fuels and restoring forest health, especially in
the wildland-urban interface.

The 2004 fire season is shaping up to be another challenging year. While
most of the nation is anticipated to be near normal in terms of the
expected number of fires and acres burned, portions of some states in
the interior West is expected to have the potential for an above normal
wildland fire season.

The potential for build up of fuels, recognition that long-term drought
persists over much of the interior West, and an increase of
drought-stressed and insect- damaged trees and brush have resulted in a
greater potential for large wildfires in the West. Last week's fires in
Southern California resulted from stifling heat and an abundance of dry
brush. Although last year's fall wildfires in Southern California
charred more than 740,000 acres, they consumed only 7% of the dying
trees and dry chaparral lands that surround the local communities.

**2003 FIRE SEASON REVIEW**

The effects of catastrophic wildfires and the efforts to reduce
hazardous fuels in forests and on grasslands across this country have
been at the forefront of local and national interest. Nationwide, the
2003 fire season had 63,000 fires which burned more than 4 million
acres. Of this amount, 18,000 fires burned 2.6 million acres on Federal
lands. Ninety-eight percent of all fires on Federal lands were stopped
during initial attack.

In 2003, while the number of acres burned nationally was below the
ten-year average, California suffered its worst wildland fire season in
modern history. Over 3,600 homes were lost, and 24 people died,
including one firefighter. The State and Federal agencies spent \$157
million to contain the fires. Sixteen people died in the floods and
debris flows that followed as a result of the fires. A large portion of
the damage to resources and improved property occurred on state or
private lands. Santa Ana winds combined with extended drought conditions
and high fuel loads led to extreme fire behavior and evacuations.
October 28, 2003 had the largest acreage burned in one day with 135,851
acres. The Cedar Fire, on and adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest,
burned 280,293 acres, ultimately becoming the largest fire in California
recorded history. The Cedar fire burned 80,000 acres in 10 hours. These
fires burned in and around wildland-urban interface areas, requiring
extensive evacuations of communities, subdivisions, and ranches.

**2004 SEASONAL WILDLAND FIRE OUTLOOK**

Weather patterns reflect a continuing drought trend through much of the
West. The Southwest is the driest area of the West. Warm March
temperatures have resulted in a significant reduction of Western
snowpacks. Late March and April storms in the Southwest (especially in
New Mexico) have delayed the onset of the fire season. However, the
Southwest may experience a rapid escalation to critical fire potential
in Arizona and Western New Mexico for May and June. Spring and summer
are expected to be warmer than normal in the West, while dryness is
expected to continue in the Southeast. Longer-term forecasts call for no
significant improvement in terms of temperature relief or increased
precipitation.

**HEALTHY FOREST INITITATIVE**

Consistent with the belief that public land policies need to be based on
common sense and common ground the Healthy Forests Initiative was
introduced by the President to help reduce the risks of catastrophic
wildfire to communities and the environment. The Healthy Forests
Initiative implements core components of the National Fire Plan's
10-year Comprehensive Strategy and Implementation Plan. HFI improves
regulatory processes to insure more timely decisions, greater
efficiency, and better results in reducing the risk of catastrophic
wildfires by restoring healthy, viable ecosystems to our forest and
rangelands.

In May of 2002, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of
Agriculture, the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and the
Western Governor's Association met to sign an implementation plan for
the *10*-*Year Comprehensive Strategy, A Collaborative Approach for
Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and Environment.* The
Strategy and Implementation Plan provides a road map for helping
communities to protect themselves from the risk of wildland fire.

The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior established the Wildland
Fire Leadership Council to coordinate wildland fire management policies
under the 10-Year Plan and to monitor accomplishment. The Council is a
cooperative organization that includes State and local and tribal
representatives, and is dedicated to achieving consistent implementation
of the goals, actions, and policies of the National Fire Plan and the
Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy.

The Council has been leading the fire management agencies in eliminating
interagency differences to ensure more seamless delivery of a
coordinated fire protection program. In its first year of operation, the
Council:

-   adopted field guidance to establish compatible, broad, national
    standards for identifying communities at risk, while still allowing
    flexibility at the State and regional levels for risk
    determinations;

-   approved a policy for emergency stabilization and rehabilitation of
    burned areas that ensures interagency consistency in the timing and
    funding of treatments and monitoring;

-   adopted a common budget structure for wildland fire management
    appropriations; and,

-   adopted interagency direction for the implementation of the Federal
    Wildland Fire Policy.

We are actively using authorities under the President's Healthy Forests
Initiative that offer additional categorical exclusions to accomplish
hazardous fuel reduction before and rehabilitation work after a fire.
These two categorical exclusions facilitate scientifically sound,
efficient, and timely planning and decision making for the treatment of
hazardous fuels and rehabilitation of areas so as to reduce risks to
communities and the environment caused by severe fires. These new
procedures to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act allow
high-priority fuels reduction and forest restoration projects identified
through collaboration with state, local and tribal governments and
interested parties to move forward more quickly.

The President sought, and in 2003 the Congress provided, long-term
stewardship contracting authority for the Bureau of Land Management and
expanded the limited authority it had previously granted to the Forest
Service. Stewardship contracts or agreements allow communities, tribes,
private companies and others to retain forest and rangeland products in
exchange for performing services for the agencies, such as fuel
reduction treatments, riparian improvements, thinning trees and removing
dead wood.

The results of this strategy are starting to materialize. In FY 2003,
the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior together treated
more than 2.7 million acres for hazardous fuels. Of this amount, almost
1.6 million acres, or 58%, were treated in the wildland urban interface
(WUI). Of the total acres, 2 million were treated by prescribed fire,
more than 460,000 by mechanical treatments, and more than 210,000 by
other treatments.

In addition to the planned treatments, the agencies treated an
additional 719,624 acres through wildland fire use -- the management of
naturally ignited wildland fires to accomplish specific resource
management objectives, such as ecosystem maintenance and restoration.

For FY 2004, the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service plan
to treat an additional 2.7 million acres of hazardous fuels. We will
focus our resources to optimally mitigate fire risk by effectively
reducing fuels and maintaining healthy forests and grasslands on
priority projects. Forest Service research indicates that well planned
treatments in key areas can successfully influence fire behavior, thus
protecting many more acres than are actually treated. Two treatments,
one a prescribed burn and one a mechanical treatment, each significantly
altered the behavior of Colorado's Hayman Fire in 2002. The Polhemus
prescribed burn mitigated the spread of the Hayman Fire despite even
though the fire approached the treated area driven by winds exceeding 30
mph. When the fire reached the mechanically treated area that portion of
the fire was more easily suppressed. In 2002 the Cone Fire entered the
Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest in northern California. When it
reached an area where trees had been thinned and surface fuels had been
treated, it dropped from a crown fire to an easily controlled surface
fire in a matter of feet.

We continue to use the full range of options available to us to achieve
our goal of restoring fire-adapted ecosystems where appropriate, through
mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, wildland use fire or through other
programs. For example At Oregon's 2002 Biscuit Fire, areas where
thinning had been followed by prescribed burning exhibited the least
burn severity of all portions of the forest that were studied.

We will also continue our effective and much-needed prescribed fire
program, including our cost efficient program in the southeastern United
States which maintains a vegetation regime of rapidly growing
vegetation. In the Western United States we will restore fire dependent
ecosystems by targeting funds towards projects that achieve this goal.
To achieve more acres treated and become more efficient in the Western
United States, we will continue to seek opportunities to treat these
acres through programs and projects such as stewardship contracting, bio
mass utilization and partnerships with other Federal agencies, tribes
and local governments.

We do not anticipate that we will treat every acre of wildland forest or
grassland that has a high fuel hazard. Neither the Forest Service the
Department of the Interior or other Federal, state or local fire
agencies can absolutely protect the growing number of homes and
businesses adjacent to wildland areas. Given severe fire conditions and
high home ignitability, exposure to flames and particularly firebrands
can result in residential destruction. It is critical that private
landowners also take steps on their own to protect their property. We
are providing help to homeowners through research on adequate defensible
space, educational materials and grant assistance to FIREWISE programs.

**FIREFIGHTING COST**

In FY 2003, the Forest Service expended \$1.02 billion to suppress
wildfires, and the Department of the Interior's suppression costs were
\$303 million. Federal wildfire suppression costs for FY 2003 were 50
percent above the average costs over the last ten years. Initial attack
success was higher than normal and both the number of fires and number
of acres burned were below average. Three out of the last four fiscal
years have seen Federal suppression costs exceeding \$1 billion per
year.

We recognize that the cost of suppressing wildland fire is high. We need
to strike a balance between the costs of suppressing fires and the need
to protect property and resources. Large fire cost reviews, which began
in 2003 will be continued in 2004. These reviews provide wildland fire
management leaders with detailed on-the-ground cost information with
which to make more cost-efficient resource decisions. The Wildland Fire
Leadership Council has directed the agencies to take actions to respond
to key finding of the large fire cost reviews including;

-   strengthening business oversight and financial management on fire
    incident command teams;

-   developing incident cost-share agreement guidelines so agreements
    can be in place prior to start of the local fire season; and,

-   resolving problems with the Wildland Fire Situation Analysis process
    to improve timeliness and practicality for field use.

The Departments will continue to implement appropriate cost reduction
actions stemming from the Large Fire Cost Reduction Action Plan and the
Fire and Aviation Management Operations Action Plan). By the end of this
year, each Federal agency land unit will have in place a current or
compliant Fire Management Plan. We will continue to use large fire cost
containment oversight teams on those incidents that meet certain size,
cost, and duration criteria. We will implement those recommendations
contained in reports from that will improve efficiency and reduce costs.
We will focus on making improvements as identified through the PART
process. Finally, the President's FY 2005 Budget includes several cost
containment initiatives such as a requirement by the Forest Service to
establish and use cost containment performance measures as well as
actions, together with targets and milestones.

This year, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council also convened a high
level panel comprised of senior State, local, Tribal and Federal
representatives, and incident team members, representing a mix of
on-the-ground and policy expertise, to examine cost containment issues
in a broader, land management- context to integrate suppression and
vegetation management. The panel's findings and recommendations will be
presented this summer.

**SUMMARY**

With the outlook for an upcoming potentially difficult fire season, the
five Federal land-managing agencies and our partners at the State and
local level are doing all that we can to be prepared. Safety of
firefighters and communities is our first priority. With the fire
adapted ecosystems of North America, we have the challenging task of
reducing fuels and the vulnerability of our communities to wildfire
while restoring the health of our forests and rangelands. This challenge
is national and long term in scope. With your continued help, all the
agencies can accomplish robust performance-based programs for the
nation's forests and rangelands, and do so in full collaboration with
state governments, communities, Congress and the American people. We
look forward to working with you in implementing the agency's programs
and would be happy to answer any questions.