Wildfire management is about protecting homes and communities - on this everyone agrees - it's deciding how that's raising the heat. President Bush is visiting several Western states this month, stumping his "Healthy Forest" Initiative as his solution. The White House wants to reduce fires by contracting with timber companies to thin federal forests in exchange for logging older growth trees and keeping the cut. This plan comes up for a Senate vote in September - will it truly save citizens or simply subsidize supporters?

Many locally-elected officials, scientists, fire fighters, and homeowners question thinning and logging in remote recesses where fire poses no threat to people or property and want fuels reduction to concentrate on the urbanized fringes where federal dollars can help communities already helping themselves.

• More than 35,000 wildfires have erupted this year, burning some 2 million acres; 7.1 acres burned in 2002
  
  
• 85% of the land surrounding communities most at risk from wildfires is private, state or tribal land - yet, the administration's 2004 National Fire Plan budget directs 95% of funding to federal lands
  
  
• Fire Safe Councils report homes are made 90% safer from forest fires by clearing 100-200' perimeters and adding metal roofs. The Healthy Forest Initiative does nothing to fund such clearing projects
  
  
• 75% of forest fires are traced to roadsides - new logging roads in national forests will increase fire risk

President Bush claims lawsuits block fire prevention plans and wants to expedite his fuel reduction projects by eliminating public comment and restricting judicial review. Government studies challenge his allegations and citizens ask why the President is so intent on cutting the public out of decisions made about public lands.

Is it possible to change the combustibility of public landscapes to control the fires we want to control? Can we pay for fire prevention without bartering away our national treasure trove of trees? What constitutes a "healthy forest" or "good fire"? Is the government spending money in the wrong place?