Bush to push ahead with forest fire plans

According to the Washington Post, President Bush has proposed a new plan to curtail forest fires involving burning underbrush and small trees in forests all over the country.

The plan was proposed months ago but now the Bush administration has decided to speed up the process by cutting through all of the red tape involved with environmental projects like this. Bush plans to hold controlled burns of the "tinder like underbrush."

Environmental activists see Bush's plan as a way to please logging companies. "This plan is nothing more than a payback to the timber industry, allowing it to remove trees far from where people live," said Amy Mall, a forest specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The amount of rules and information on how this project will impact the environment could decrease from about 200 pages to one page.

There were over 7 million acres of forest burned last summer and over 2,000 buildings destroyed. Republicans in Congress are say that they are making progress with Bush's plan while the Democrats are saying that Bush needs to slow down and follow regulations.