The fires that ravaged San Diego last week were some of the most destructive in recent history.

They burned over 300,000 acres of land, torched over 1,000 homes, killed a few people, and are a scorching reminder of how vulnerable we are to raging wildfires.

Including the San Diego fires, over 750,000 acres have burned across California. One of the worst was the Cedar Fire, reaching well into the Cleveland National Forest east of San Diego. Large fires have also ravaged areas north of San Diego, penetrating national forests in the San Bernardino County area.

What the Bush administration has wanted to do for some time is to take advantage of a practice called thinning to make sure that forested areas are not merely fuel for raging wildfires; he wishes to protect these national parks by mitigating extreme fire hazards which threaten to burn them down.

During this time last year, Bush surveyed fire damage throughout Oregon and unveiled his Healthy Forests Initiative.

“”The forest policy of our government is misguided policy. It doesn’t work,”” Bush told reporters in 2002. “”We need to thin.””

Through the actions of California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the wait for Bush’s Healthy Forests plan might be over.

As a result of the California fires, Feinstein has jumped on board, co-sponsoring a bipartisan modification of Bush’s plan that will require half the program’s funds to be used in areas that directly impact communities, such as those by residential neighborhoods.

“”There is a tremendous lesson in these fires ‹ that the land has to be managed,”” said Feinstein of her bill, which was adopted 80-14 in the Senate late Oct. 30.

Inspired by Bush’s calls a year ago in Oregon and the recent California fires, Feinstein’s plan has already been challenged by environmentalists who have charged that the modified plan is just a blank check for the logging industry to pillage our national forests.

But any such argument in favor of excessively thick, dense forest is contradictory to American forest history. Indeed, many scientists have theorized that there are currently more trees in North America than there were when Columbus landed.

“”Due to decades of mismanagement, the thinning of these forests remains largely unpracticed within our state, leaving forests that historically contained just 30 to 40 trees per acre now filled with 300 to 400 trees per acre,”” Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) wrote in National Review Online on Oct. 31.

Forest science professor Tom Bonnicksen at Texas A&M University also agrees that a thinned forest is a more natural forest.

“”Unlike the popular idealized image of historic forests, which depicts old trees spread like a blanket over the landscape, a real historic forest was patchy,”” Bonnicksen told the San Diego Union-Tribune in August 2002.

A month later, he again told the Union-Tribune, “”There’s only one way to break this cycle of monster fires, and that’s to go in and restore our forests to something like they were historically.””

And increases in fires since the 1980s clearly show that it is precisely environmental regulation that is to blame.

“”Up until the 1980s, some of the national forests in San Bernardino County were commercially logged,”” the Sacramento Bee reported last week. Because of environmental policies since then that have declared the lands off limits, they are perfect fuel for raging fires.

Not only is the plan good forest policy, but it is good economic policy as well.

By heeding the calls of environmentalists and excessively protecting our forests, the result is that “”American taxpayers spent over $1.6 billion [last year in California] fighting record-setting blazes due to overgrown forests,”” wrote Doolittle.

In addition to the possibility of saving a big chunk of the $1.6 billion spent fighting forest fires last year in California alone, the modified Bush plan also takes advantage of using logging to thin the forests to pay for parts of the plan itself.

Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico answers the critics.

“”For those who have been so worried that we’re going to log the forests to death, they have watched them burn to death,”” Domenici told Associated Press. “”It’s high time we fix it.””

And while thinning may do little to prevent the types of fires we witnessed within the city limits of San Diego, Feinstein’s plan addresses that concern by earmarking half of the funds for community areas, the rest to be used for at-risk thinning projects.

All in all, the plan will save our forests and save our communities, all while saving taxpayer money that has gone up in smoke.