10/24/2007

By WILLIAM McCALL  / Associated Press

U.S. Forest Service chief Gail Kimbell says the nation can expect more wildfires like the ones raging through Southern California as global climate change heats up the world's forests.

"Fires are burning hotter and bigger, becoming more damaging and dangerous to people and to property," Kimbell said Wednesday. "Each year the fire season comes earlier and lasts longer."

Agency officials in Washington, D.C., said she was heading from a speech in Portland to Southern California later Wednesday to get a firsthand look.

Kimbell said the fire threat in California and other states has become more complex as cities push up against the wilderness.

"It's not just a natural resource issue," she said. "There's a huge social issue there."

She suggested the wildfire threat could be reduced with more planning and preparation, especially at the local level in cooperation with state, county and city agencies — even neighborhood groups.

Prevention is vital, she said, considering that the cost of fighting wildfires takes a rising share of the Forest Service budget — about $1.5 billion in fiscal 2006.

"And out of a $4 billion budget, that's quite a bit," Kimbell said. The spending has forced cutbacks in other programs, she said.

Kimbell also warned in a speech to the Society of American Foresters of other effects of global warming on the forests. The meeting drew about 2,000 of the nation's leading natural resource managers and scientists to talk about issues such as ways to balance logging, recreation and conservation.

Drier, hotter forests are more vulnerable to invasive species, such as plants like knapweed and kudzu and insects like the mountain pine beetle, Kimbell said

"Nationwide, invasive plants cover an area greater than Oregon and Washington combined," Kimbell said, costing the nation by one estimate about $138 billion a year.

On global markets, she said, U.S. forest managers face competition from plantation forests in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia that supply about a quarter of the world's timber — a share expected to increase to half by 2020.

About a third of the United States is forest, she said, but it is generally more expensive to log and manage, giving foreign producers "a long-term market advantage."