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cases found wanting. The expertise level in these agencies has been reduced even from 

 what it was in 1988. 



The remainder of my remarks focus largely in California and the Sierra Nevada, an area I 

 am familiar with. 



Fuels in the Forest. Live and dead fuels in today's conifer forests are more abundant 

 and continuous than in the past. The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNTP) identified 

 the many factors responsible including climatic variation, timber harvest, mining, 

 grazing, human settlement patterns and land-use practices along with nearly a century of 

 fire suppression. Timber harvest, through its effects on forest structure and fuel 

 accumulation if not accompanied by adequate reduction of fuels, can result in increasing 

 the severity of fires more so than any other recent human activity. However, when 

 accompanied by adequate slash treatment, logging can serve as an effective tool to 

 reduce fire hazard. Longstanding agency policy and state law require slash disposal as 

 a part of timber harvest. 



In the Sierra Nevada, the biggest share of large acreages burned in the decades of the 

 eighties and nineties resulted from lightning ignitions where multiple ignitions occurred 

 under very warm, dry conditions overwhelming the ability of suppression forces to 

 respond, or when fire suppression forces were already scarce because of commitment to 

 fires already occurring elsewhere. This pattern is a phenomenon of these two decades. 

 Human caused fires have, since the early 1900s, burned more acres in the Sierra Nevada 

 however, with peak years occurring from the mid 1920s to the mid 1940s. 



Prescribed Fire, Will It Do The Job? It is estimated by the Forest Service that in the 

 National Forests in California, the treatment of fuels on one million acres a year would be 

 required for 30 years to create conditions where fire could substantially play its role in 

 ecosystems without substantial intervention and suppression costs. These estimates 

 include multiple entries on the land to reach a condition where fuel volumes and fire 

 return frequencies are in balance to maintain something approaching pre-settlement 

 conditions. The estimated cost of this regime is one billion dollars. The question of 

 feasibility is raised from several standpoints. Was it assumed that prescribed fire was the 

 only method to be utib'zed in reaching this condition? Would it require a major change in 

 the way the agency is funded? Would the balance between resource outputs be 

 acceptable? Is the level of fire expertise in die agency sufficient to implement this 

 program? Would Land Management Plans need to be evaluated and materially revised? 

 Are laws establishing air quality standards flexible enough to accommodate long periods 

 of smoke pollution? Would the likely changes in public use patterns be acceptable? 

 Would private land values in the Siena Nevada be changed? Can cooperation and 

 collaboration among all land owners in the Sierra Nevada gain the broad public support 

 necessary for such a program to succeed? Would a return to presetllement fire regimes be 

 an acceptable condition to the public and other landowners? 



The development of intermingled, privately-owned forested lands for human habitation, 



