•HCON 406 IH
at risk and pose threats to human health, personal prop-
erty, sustainable ecosystems, and air and water quality;
Whereas according to the National Fire Protection Associa-
tion, wildland-urban interface catastrophic wildfires de-
stroyed 9,925 homes between 1985 and 1994, and
burned six million acres of public lands nationwide in
1999 alone, equivalent to a 3-mile-wide swath from the
District of Columbia to Los Angeles, California;
Whereas the escaped Cerro Grande prescribed fire in May
2000, which consumed 48,000 acres and destroyed 400
homes with losses exceeding a billion dollars in Los Ala-
mos, New Mexico, and the escaped Lowden prescribed
fire in 1999 that destroyed 23 homes in Lewiston, Cali-
fornia, highlight the unacceptable risks of using pre-
scribed burning as the sole forest fire management prac-
tice of Federal land management agencies;
Whereas as of September 14, 2000, more than 6.5 million
acres have burned nationwide this year, with several
months left in the 2000 fire season;
Whereas high-risk forest fuel has accumulated in combination
with reduced fire response capability by Federal agencies
during the 1990’s, resulting in catastrophic wildfires be-
coming more difficult and expensive to extinguish, with a
disproportionate burden being placed on State and local
resources, while the costs to fight these fires have in-
creased by 150 percent between 1986 and 1994, and the
costs of maintaining a readiness force have increased by
70 percent between 1992 and 1997;
Whereas current planning efforts of the United States Forest
Service, such as the Sierra Nevada Framework, Interior
Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, the
•HCON 406 IH
Roadless Initiative, and Federal monument proclama-
tions, rely primarily on extensive use of prescribed fires,
which will further exacerbate the risk of catastrophic
wildfire on Federal lands throughout the West; and
Whereas on September 9, 2000, the President released a re-
port, entitled ‘‘Managing the Impact of Wildfires on
Communities and the Environment, A Report to the
President in Response to the Wildfires of 2000’’: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate
concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that—
(1) in the interest of protecting the integrity
and posterity of United States forest and wild lands,
wildlife habitat, watershed, air quality, human health
and safety, and private property, the United States
Forest Service and other Federal land management
agencies should—
(A) immediately enact a cohesive strategy
to reduce the overabundance of forest fuels
which place these resources at high risk of cata-
strophic wildfire;
(B) utilize an appropriate mix of fire sup-
pression activities and management methodolo-
gies, including selective thinning, selective har-
vesting, grazing, control of insects and patho-
gens, the removal of excessive ground fuels, and
small-scale prescribed burns, including in-
•HCON 406 IH
creased private, local, and State contracts for
prefire treatments on Federal forest lands; and
(C) pursue more effective fire suppression
in Federal forest lands through increased fund-
ing of mutual aid agreements with professional
State and local public firefighting agencies; and
(2) in the interest of forest protection and rural
community safety, the Departments of Agriculture
and the Interior immediately should prepare for pub-
lic review a national prescribed fire strategy for pub-
lic lands that creates a process for evaluation of
worst case scenarios for risk of escape and identifies
alternatives that will achieve the land management
objectives while minimizing the risk and use of pre-
scribed fire, which strategy should be incorporated
into any regulatory land use planning programs that
propose the use of prescribed fire as a management
practice.
Æ