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Whereas the July 2001 General Accounting Office testimony
entitled ‘‘The National Fire Plan: Federal Agencies Are
Not Organized to Effectively and Efficiently Implement
the Plan’’ (GAO–01–1022T) before the House of Rep-
resentatives Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
reported that ‘‘The Federal Government’s decades-old
policy of suppressing all wildland fires, including natu-
rally occurring ones, have resulted in dangerous accumu-
lations of hazardous fuels on Federal lands. As a result,
conditions on 211,000,000 acres, or almost one-third of
all Federal lands, continue to deteriorate’’ and ‘‘[t]he list
of at-risk communities ballooned to over 22,000’’;
Whereas the escaped prescribed burn that created the Cerro
Grande Fire in May 2000, that consumed 48,000 acres
and 
destroyed 
400 
homes 
with 
losses 
exceeding
$1,000,000,000 in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the es-
caped prescribed burn that created the Lowden Fire in
1999 that destroyed 23 homes in Lewiston, California,
highlight the unacceptable risks of over reliance on pre-
scribed burning by Federal land management agencies;
Whereas similar catastrophic wildfire resolutions were passed
by the California Legislature (AJR 69) and Western
Legislative Forestry Task Force (R00–1) in 2000 and
Oregon (HJM 22), Idaho (SJM 104), Montana (HJ 22)
in 2001, and South Dakota (HCR 1018) in 2002; and
Whereas in 2000, Congress provided an unprecedented
$2,900,000,000 in funding for wildlife firefighting agen-
cies of the United States Department of Agriculture and
the Department of the Interior to prepare for future fire-
suppression efforts and take proactive steps to reduce
wildfire risk on all Federal lands: Now, therefore, be it
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Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate
concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that—
(1) in the interest of protecting the integrity
and posterity of United States forests and wildlands,
wildlife habitats, watersheds, air quality, human
health and safety, and private property, the Forest
Service and other Federal land management agen-
cies should—
(A) fully support the ‘‘Collaborative 10-
year Strategy for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks
to Communities and the Environment’’ as pre-
pared by the Western Governors’ Association,
the Department of Agriculture, the Department
of the Interior, and other stakeholders, to re-
duce the overabundance of forest fuels that
place these resources at high risk of cata-
strophic wildfire;
(B) use an appropriate mix of fire preven-
tion activities and management practices, in-
cluding forest restoration, thinning of at-risk
forest stands, grazing, selective tree removal,
and other measures to control insects and
pathogens, removal of excessive ground fuels,
and prescribed burns;
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(C) increase the role for private, local, and
State contracts for fuel reduction treatments on
Federal forest lands and adjoining private prop-
erties; and
(D) pursue more effective fire suppression
on Federal forest lands through increased fund-
ing of mutual aid agreements with professional
State and local public fire fighting agencies;
(2) in the interest of forest protection and pub-
lic safety, the United States Department of Agri-
culture and the Department of the Interior should
immediately prepare for public review a national as-
sessment of prescribed burning practices on public
lands to identify alternatives that will achieve land
management objectives to minimize risks associated
with prescribed fire; and
(3) results from the national assessment of pre-
scribed burning practices on public lands as de-
scribed in paragraph (2) should be incorporated into
any regulatory land use planning programs that pro
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pose the use of prescribed fire as a management practice.
Passed the House of Representatives July 22, 2002.
Attest:
JEFF TRANDAHL,
Clerk.