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Under Secretary LYONS. Congresswoman, you know, throwing 

 numbers around gets to be a complicated thing. I just want to be 

 clear about one thing, and that is in terms of fuels management 

 prescribed fire funding. In 1996 we received $24.5 million, and I 

 just want to clarify, since I made the statement in my opening re- 

 marks, that that represents roughly a quadrupling of the funds 

 that were available for prescribed fire since fiscal year 1989. I want 

 to compliment the Congress on helping us get the additional funds, 

 but it reflects I think a joint effort in the request that we made to 

 try and provide additional funds, and I would certainly acknowl- 

 edge that we could use more. 



Mrs. Chenoweth. All right. Now I just want to clarify the 

 record, with the Chairman's indulgence. You received $24,500,000 

 for fuel removal. 



Under Secretary Lyons. For fuel management prescribed fire. 



Mrs. Chenoweth. All right. But presuppression fire manage- 

 ment, as I understand it, was $270,815,000 and that's the figure 

 that I'm asking for a breakdown on. 



Under Secretary LYONS. I guess the point I want to make so we 

 understand this is much of that money goes toward preparing for 

 firefighting efforts. It doesn't go into reducing fuels. It goes to posi- 

 tioning equipment and people so as to be prepared to deal with fire 

 where the fire organization anticipates a high likelihood of wildfire. 

 So much of that in essence goes into the suppression effort when 

 the fire strikes. It's prepositioning resources. That's different from 

 what I think was addressed earlier, and that is the money that 

 goes into restoring prescribed fire to ecosystems to hopefully pre- 

 vent the need to use those suppression dollars at all. 



Mrs. Chenoweth. I just want to restate my request. The 

 $270,815,000 for pre-fire suppression activities is what I'm asking 

 for a breakdown on, and it appears that that is 10 times the 

 amount of the actual suppression activities, such as fuel removal, 

 that occurred. 



Mr. Chairman, that is my request. 



Ms. Lavin. We would be happy to provide that because it's an 

 important part of our budget. The dollars spent in presuppression 

 reduces the dollars that we will eventually have to spend in sup- 

 pression. So we would be happy to supply it. 



Chairman Hansen. Mr. Herger, I recognize you for five minutes 

 if you want to take it. 



Mr. Herger. I'll take it, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Mr. Thomas, I want to thank you for the work that you did with 

 us about a year ago on our salvage bill. Yourself and your depart- 

 ment worked with us in drafting that and putting that together. I 

 listened to the testimony of Mr. Lyons who mentioned the 7 to 10 

 years of drought of the dense forests that need to be thinned. Could 

 I ask you, do you share this concern, that we have a forest that 

 is overstocked, that is dead and dying in many areas and where we 

 have situations on the Six Rivers as portrayed by our pictures, that 

 this is a major problem? 



Chief Thomas. Yes, sir. 



Mr. Herger. And I want to commend you for the firefighting ef- 

 fort that the Forest Service does. I have some parts overall of eight 

 national forests in my District, and I want to say the Forest Serv- 



