Congress recently approved legislation that allows logging in old-growth forests and does little to limit wildfire risks in areas close to homes. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act passed the House by a vote of 286 to 140, with the Senate following suit by voice vote. The measure, which takes its cue from President Bush’s “Healthy Forests Initiative,” allows increased commercial logging of old-growth trees in national forests, purportedly to reduce runaway forest fires that have plagued the West in recent years, even though such trees are not the source of the problem. Rather, these catastrophic fires are the result of a buildup of small trees and underbrush “due to a variety of Forest Service policies, including the practice of extinguishing low-intensity fires” while allowing timber companies to harvest “the larger, most fire-resistant trees,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Yet instead of seriously dealing with this problem, the administration has instead exploited it for the benefit of the timber industry, which gave $3.4 million to the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Republican National Committee during the 2000 and 2002 election cycles. The bill authorizes $760 million a year for thinning projects on 20 million acres of public land and requires that just half of the money be spent on projects near at-risk residential communities. “Communities across the West are not getting the help they desperately need,” said Sean Cosgrove of the Sierra Club. “If the Bush administration and Congress are serious about protecting homes and lives, they should appropriate sufficient funds and earmark them for work around communities.” The measure also encourages courts to expedite reviews of complaints and appeals against timber projects. Under the bill, only individuals who submit written comments on proposed projects will be permitted to launch administrative appeals and judges will have to renew preliminary injunctions blocking projects every 60 days.