---
kind: "section"
citation: "16 U.S.C. § 6701"
title: "16"
title_heading: "Conservation"
number: "6701"
heading: "Findings"
release: "119-102"
date: "2026-07-12"
url: "https://uscodex.org/usc/16/6701"
units:
  - "Chapter 86 — Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention"
---

# §6701. Findings


Congress finds that—

- (1) there is an increasing threat of wildfire to millions of acres of forest land and rangeland throughout the United States;
- (2) forest land and rangeland are degraded as a direct consequence of land management practices, including practices to control and prevent wildfires and the failure to harvest subdominant trees from overstocked stands that disrupt the occurrence of frequent low-intensity fires that have periodically removed flammable undergrowth;
- (3) at least 39,000,000 acres of land of the National Forest System in the [interior West](/usc/16/6703.md?p=5) are at high risk of wildfire;
- (4) an average of 95 percent of the expenditures by the Forest Service for wildfire suppression during fiscal years 1990 through 1994 were made to suppress wildfires in the [interior West](/usc/16/6703.md?p=5);
- (5) the number, size, and severity of wildfires in the [interior West](/usc/16/6703.md?p=5) are increasing;
- (6) of the timberland in National Forests in the [States](/usc/16/544.md?p=r) of Arizona and New Mexico, 59 percent of such land in Arizona, and 56 percent of such land in New Mexico, has an average diameter of 9 to 12 inches diameter at breast height;
- (7) the population of the [interior West](/usc/16/6703.md?p=5) grew twice as fast as the national average during the 1990s;
- (8) catastrophic wildfires—
  - (A) endanger homes and communities;
  - (B) damage and destroy watersheds and soils; and
  - (C) pose a serious threat to the habitat of threatened and endangered species;
- (9) a 1994 assessment of forest health in the [interior West](/usc/16/6703.md?p=5) estimated that only a 15- to 30-year window of opportunity exists for effective management intervention before damage from uncontrollable wildfire becomes widespread, with 8 years having already elapsed since the assessment;
- (10) healthy forest and woodland ecosystems—
  - (A) reduce the risk of wildfire to forests and communities;
  - (B) improve wildlife habitat and biodiversity;
  - (C) increase tree, grass, forb, and shrub productivity;
  - (D) enhance watershed values;
  - (E) improve the environment; and
  - (F) provide a basis in some [areas](/usc/16/539m–1.md?p=1-A) for economically and environmentally sustainable uses;
- (11) sustaining the long-term ecological and economic health of [interior West](/usc/16/6703.md?p=5) forests and woodland, and their associated human communities requires preventing severe wildfires before the wildfires occur and permitting natural, low-intensity ground fires;
- (12) more natural fire regimes cannot be accomplished without the reduction of excess fuels and thinning of subdominant trees (which fuels and trees may be of commercial value);
- (13) ecologically based forest and woodland ecosystem [restoration](/usc/16/6703.md?p=7) on a landscape scale will—
  - (A) improve long-term community protection;
  - (B) minimize the need for wildfire suppression;
  - (C) improve resource values;
  - (D) improve the ecological integrity and resilience of these systems;
  - (E) reduce rehabilitation costs;
  - (F) reduce loss of critical habitat; and
  - (G) protect forests for future generations;
- (14) although landscape scale [restoration](/usc/16/6703.md?p=7) is needed to effectively reverse degradation, scientific understanding of landscape scale treatments is limited;
- (15) rigorous, objective, understandable, and applied scientific information is needed for—
  - (A) the design, implementation, monitoring, and adaptation of landscape scale [restoration](/usc/16/6703.md?p=7) treatments and improvement of wildfire management;
  - (B) the environmental review process; and
  - (C) [affected entities](/usc/16/6703.md?p=2) that collaborate in the development and implementation of wildfire treatment.

## Source credit

(Pub. L. 108–317, § 2, Oct. 5, 2004, 118 Stat. 1204.)

## Notes

### Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

### Short Title

Pub. L. 108–317, § 1, Oct. 5, 2004, 118 Stat. 1204, provided that: “This Act [enacting this chapter] may be cited as the ‘Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act of 2004’.”