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--> --> BLM land part of White House thinning venture By Vickie Aldous Ashland Daily Tidings Local residents will have an up-close look at Bush administration efforts to streamline wildfire fuels reduction projects. The Rogue River Fire and Fuels Management Plan will receive an expedited environmental review as one of 10 pilot projects undertaken nationwide to test administration plans to shorten planning for forest thinning projects, federal officials announced Wednesday. The plan calls for reducing wildfire fuels on 8,000 acres of Medford District Bureau of Land Management lands lining the Rogue River from its confluence with the Applegate River to Grave Creek. "We've been vying to get the money necessary to do this plan," District Manager Ron Wenker said. "Obviously this will become a priority for us to do this." BLM officials will work with affected communities to develop the plan, and have yet to determine whether it will include commercial logging. "It's strictly a fuels reduction proposal," said Abbie Jossie, field manager for the district's Grants Pass Resource Area. "It may involve some thinning of trees, but it's not proposed as a timber sale." Many of the communities along the Rogue River were threatened by the northern flank of the Biscuit fire over the summer, which burned nearly 500,000 acres before being contained, BLM officials said. Other pilot projects to test the new Bush administration rules are located in Washington, California, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Texas and Michigan. Environmental assessments - which detail a range of alternatives and environmental consequences of those alternatives - will be shortened for those pilot projects, according to administration officials. The expedited planning is part of a number of changes announced Wednesday by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman James Connaughton to meet President Bush's call for reforms to speed wildfire fuels reduction. The changes are needed to treat forests that have grown unnaturally dense due to a century of misguided wildfire suppression, administration officials said. The overstocking fueled wildfires that burned 7.1 million acres of land this summer. In addition to shortening environmental assessments on pilot projects, the administrative changes call for other priority thinning and post-wildfire rehabilitation projects to proceed without environmental assessments or more rigorous environmental impact statements. The agencies have done environmental analyses of hundreds of projects and found no significant environmental damage, Similar projects should be allowed to go forward without environmental study, officials said. Those projects must follow all applicable environmental laws, and cannot occur in wilderness areas, involve the use of herbicides or pesticides or the construction of new roads, or include timber sales that do not have fuels reduction as their primary purpose. U.S. Forest Service officials estimated that planning and assessment consume 40 percent of the agency's time and cost $250 million per year. Reducing environmental reviews could save $100 million for that agency alone. Funds could be redirected to work on the ground, administration officials said. "These common sense steps will allow federal agencies to spend millions of dollars a year on environmental restoration and conservation rather than needless paperwork," Connaughton said in a prepared statement. "The result will be safer communities, safer firefighters and healthier forest ecosystems." The administration also is limiting the right to file administrative appeals of projects to individuals or groups who raised objections at earlier hearings. The Office of Hearings and Appeals must decide on appeals within 60 days under the changes. Additionally, agency officials will be able to group projects to determine compliance with the Endangered Species Act. They also can consider the long-term benefits of fuels reduction projects along with negative effects, and approve those projects with net benefits. The changes were met with skepticism by many environmental group members, including those at the Ashland and Williams-based Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center. "I really hope this is not used as a way to open the door to the timber industry having more ability to log old growth on our national forests," said Joseph Vaile, campaign coordinator for the center. "The Bush administration is using fire and the fear of fire as a way to move their agenda of increased logging on public lands." Effective wildfire risk reduction projects remove brush and small diameter trees rather than large, fire-resistant trees, he said. The group will be watching closely as the changes are instituted on Medford BLM land, according to Vaile. "We're going to be a test case," he said. The administration changes will be published in the Federal Register in coming weeks, and a public comment period will follow. The Associated Press contributed to this story. On the list By The Associated Press The 10 areas the Bush administration has identified as fire-prone regions where it will test new rules meant to speed thinning of brush and timber: · forests near the Medford district office of the BLM, southwestern Oregon; · forests near the Fillmore field office of the Bureau of Land Management, southwestern Utah; · Dixie National Forest, southwestern Utah; · forests near the Pocatello field office of the BLM, southeastern Idaho; · forests near the Las Vegas field office of the BLM, southeastern Nevada; · Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery, Fish and Wildlife Service, northern Washington; · Mendocito National Forest, northern California; · Eldorado National Forest, northeastern California; · Huron-Manistee National Forests, northeastern Michigan; · and, Sam Houston National Forest, southeastern Texas Email your... 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