Washington outlook.

Congress left town for its summer recess after taking two actions that set the stage for an eventful---and intensely political--fall when members return to debate forest policy issues. The Senate Agriculture Committee passed its version of the "Healthy Forests Restoration Act" (HR 1904) fairly easily, with minor changes to the House-passed version. The easy passage, however, merely reflected a strategy by Committee members to save the fighting over controversial provisions until September when the bill is expected to go to the Senate floor.

Meanwhile, the House used a political ploy that infuriated many senators, forcing the Senate to accept an emergency funding bill for FY 2003 that excludes critical funds for wildfire suppression. Combined, these two actions suggest that the politics over forest health and wildfire issues will be as hot this fall as they were last year.

In July, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed a version of HR 1904 that is not significantly different than the version passed by the House in May. Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-MS) offered the Senate version as a substitute. The bill focuses on efforts to expedite hazardous fuels reduction projects to reduce wildfire threats facing communities, watersheds, and forest resources. The Senate version retains most controversial provisions, such as its proposals to speed up administrative appeals and judicial review and to allow up to 1,000-acre forest treatments as research projects called "applied silvicultural assessments."

The Senate version also includes new language from a similar bill (S. 1449) introduced by Sens. Mike Crape (R-ID) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AK), the chairman and ranking minority member of the Forestry, Conservation, and Rural Revitalization Subcommittee. Two of these new provisions reflect activities for which community-based forestry groups have long advocated. The first, "local preference contracting," seeks to provide employment and training opportunities to individuals in rural communities by allowing federal agencies to award contracts to entities operating in rural areas that agree to hire or train a significant percentage of locals.

The second provision, "rural revitalization through forestry," establishes a program through which the Forest Service may seek to accelerate the use of technologies for woody biomass and small-diameter trees, create community-based enterprises through marketing activities and demonstration projects, and establish small-scale business enterprises to make use of woody biomass and small-diameter trees.

The Senate version of the bill did not include any of AMERICAN FORESTS' suggestions related to collaboration, multiparty monitoring, or funding for hazardous fuels-reduction projects. We will continue to offer these ideas to congressional staff working on the legislation in hopes that they might be included in final versions of the Senate legislation. Based on recent experience in Congress, however, the process for "negotiating" the final version of the bill is likely to be very messy and full of conflict.

The emergency funding situation for fighting wildfires only exacerbates political tension over healthy forests legislation. Last year the Forest Service had to borrow millions from other programs to pay for emergency wildfire suppression. AMERICAN FORESTS and our community-based partners asked Congress to do something to prevent this situation from happening again because last year's borrowing had dire impacts on many communities.

Unfortunately, Congress has not dealt with the issue. In fact, the House decided to cut $319 million in wildfire suppression funding out of the FY 2003 emergency funding bill that Congress wanted to pass before its August recess. By taking this action, the House forced the Senate to either accept the cut in wildfire funding or put the entire emergency funding bill off until September. The Senate decided to pass the legislation.

The Forest Service now projects it may need to borrow more than $400 million from other programs by the end of September to pay for emergency wildfire suppression. The situation in our forests and communities is, therefore, likely to be tense when Congress returns to deal with these issues in September. That tension will be reflected in the political debate in Washington.