H. R. 2696
One Hundred Eighth Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE SECOND SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,
the twentieth day of January, two thousand and four
An Act
To establish Institutes to demonstrate and promote the use of adaptive ecosystem
management to reduce the risk of wildfires, and restore the health of fire-adapted
forest and woodland ecosystems of the interior West.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Southwest Forest Health and
Wildfire Prevention Act of 2004’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds that—
(1) there is an increasing threat of wildfire to millions
of acres of forest land and rangeland throughout the United
States;
(2) forest land and rangeland are degraded as a direct
consequence of land management practices, including practices
to control and prevent wildfires and the failure to harvest
subdominant trees from overstocked stands that disrupt the
occurrence of frequent low-intensity fires that have periodically
removed flammable undergrowth;
(3) at least 39,000,000 acres of land of the National Forest
System in the interior West are at high risk of wildfire;
(4) an average of 95 percent of the expenditures by the
Forest Service for wildfire suppression during fiscal years 1990
through 1994 were made to suppress wildfires in the interior
West;
(5) the number, size, and severity of wildfires in the interior
West are increasing;
(6) of the timberland in National Forests in the States
of Arizona and New Mexico, 59 percent of such land in Arizona,
and 56 percent of such land in New Mexico, has an average
diameter of 9 to 12 inches diameter at breast height;
(7) the population of the interior West grew twice as fast
as the national average during the 1990s;
(8) catastrophic wildfires—
(A) endanger homes and communities;
(B) damage and destroy watersheds and soils; and
(C) pose a serious threat to the habitat of threatened
and endangered species;
(9) a 1994 assessment of forest health in the interior West
estimated that only a 15- to 30-year window of opportunity
exists for effective management intervention before damage
H. R. 2696—2
from uncontrollable wildfire becomes widespread, with 8 years
having already elapsed since the assessment;
(10) healthy forest and woodland ecosystems—
(A) reduce the risk of wildfire to forests and commu-
nities;
(B) improve wildlife habitat and biodiversity;
(C) increase tree, grass, forb, and shrub productivity;
(D) enhance watershed values;
(E) improve the environment; and
(F) provide a basis in some areas for economically
and environmentally sustainable uses;
(11) sustaining the long-term ecological and economic
health of interior West forests and woodland, and their associ-
ated human communities requires preventing severe wildfires
before the wildfires occur and permitting natural, low-intensity
ground fires;
(12) more natural fire regimes cannot be accomplished
without the reduction of excess fuels and thinning of subdomi-
nant trees (which fuels and trees may be of commercial value);
(13) ecologically based forest and woodland ecosystem res-
toration on a landscape scale will—
(A) improve long-term community protection;
(B) minimize the need for wildfire suppression;
(C) improve resource values;
(D) improve the ecological integrity and resilience of
these systems;
(E) reduce rehabilitation costs;
(F) reduce loss of critical habitat; and
(G) protect forests for future generations;
(14) although landscape scale restoration is needed to effec-
tively reverse degradation, scientific understanding of land-
scape scale treatments is limited;
(15) rigorous, objective, understandable, and applied sci-
entific information is needed for—
(A) the design, implementation, monitoring, and
adaptation of landscape scale restoration treatments and
improvement of wildfire management;
(B) the environmental review process; and
(C) affected entities that collaborate in the development
and implementation of wildfire treatment.
SEC. 3. PURPOSES.
The purposes of this Act are—
(1) to enhance the capacity to develop, transfer, apply,
monitor, and regularly update practical science-based forest
restoration treatments that will reduce the risk of severe
wildfires, and improve the health of dry forest and woodland
ecosystems in the interior West;
(2) to synthesize and adapt scientific findings from conven-
tional research programs to the implementation of forest and
woodland restoration on a landscape scale;
(3) to facilitate the transfer of interdisciplinary knowledge
required to understand the socioeconomic and environmental
impacts of wildfire on ecosystems and landscapes;
(4) to require the Institutes established under this Act
to collaborate with Federal agencies—