The Honorable Gale Norton
Secretary of the Interior
President's Briefing on Healthy Forest Initiative
December 11, 2002

• The first thing I would tell you today is that we are dealing with an emergency situation. And for those who think we have a breathing spell this winter, the Southwest fire season is only a few months away-- it starts as early as March in places like Arizona, where they still have not recovered from the last devastating fires.
• This year's roaring fire season burned the equivalent of two states and touched families, friends, businesses in many different ways.

        Thousands of people in Arizona, Colorado, California,
        Oregon and New Mexico had to be evacuated from their
        homes.

        In the Rodeo Chediski fire in Arizona, 35,000 people were
        evacuated.


        In South Dakota, Deadwood was on fire, which shut down tourism in the Black Hills area.

• I mentioned Arizona, and there was New Mexico, Oregon-the list goes on. Destination spots became avoidance spots last summer.

• For those whose livelihood depends on tourism, there is no answer to the fact that people don't want to camp in a charred campground or gaze at a dead forest.

• Americans also need to realize that the emergency isn't over when the last embers die out.
• You have heard us mention watersheds as areas that need protection. Here is what we are talking about. Since the Missionary Ridge Fire burned in Durango, Colorado this June there have been some rains and melting snows. That runoff over charred ground and burned trees loosened sediment, soil and rocks into the Animas River.
• News reports showed boulders the size of old cars came down hillsides and plowed into homes; sediment washed from river banks until the river ran black and even now-months later it runs brown. This is the river that provides water to the citizens of Durango.

• Similarly, Denver's major water storage area burned in the Hayman fire. That fire was the third largest fire in Colorado history.
• Runoff from the Hayman fire put tons of debris into the Cheesman Reservoir. Its intake system could not begin to handle the onslaught. Denver has been forced to spend millions of dollars to handle the negative impact to their water supply.

• The President's Healthy Forests Initiative emphasized the need for improvement.
• We took the President's directive to our career employees who work at the local level managing public lands, fighting fires, cleaning up after fires and helping to prevent catastrophic devastation.
• We asked them what could be done to help them do their work. The recommendations we announce today started with them. I thank them for their dedication and insight.
• One of the reforms is the need for better planning for wildlife and its habitat.

ESA

• Ironically, while fuels reduction projects are often delayed or prevented due to litigation over the Endangered Species Act requirements, catastrophic fires that could be prevented by these projects can have devastating consequences for a species. The Biscuit Fire in Oregon destroyed more than 100,000 acres of spotted owl habitat.
• Even more telling, the Penasco Fire on the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico in April 2002 wiped out a population of Mexican spotted owls. The recovery plan for these owls recommends the forest be managed to a healthier state through such measures as appropriate thinning.
• We can't prevent all fires, but we can influence their impacts with fuels treatment.
• Two guidance documents that are part of the proposals announced today will facilitate and expedite the consultation process for the ESA to move fuels treatment projects more quickly.
• The first guidance improves the process by encouraging similar projects be put together for consideration into one batch. It also encourages managers to develop project criteria that can be used again and again.
• The second guidance recommends that managers evaluate the net benefits of fuels treatment projects in the consultation process. While fuels treatment may have short-or-long-term adverse effects on some species, the long-term net benefit can be substantial and sustaining to the species.
• Compare a fuels treatment interruption to habitat for the Mexican spotted owl to what happened to them in the catastrophic fire that decimated their population in New Mexico.

• As we seek to treat these areas, Departments will not work alone to decide on priorities and areas to be treated.

• No project will be chosen for fuels treatment without a collaborative process that includes all stakeholders and partners. The process will include local governments, tribes and state foresters as described in the Ten-Year Implementation Plan for the National Fire Plan.
• Dense, overgrown forests and rangelands have grown like a cancer. They need to be treated.
• These modest changes can make a difference in the number of fuels treatment projects we are able to move forward across this country. We believe that returning the forests and rangelands to health will help prevent the catastrophic fires we have seen recently.
• Legislation remains vitally necessary. These measures are a start, but we still have a long way to go in reversing a decades-old problem.