"The president asked the secretaries [of Interior and Agriculture], 'Come up with a plan that may prevent us, or help us from not going through what we went through in the year 2000.'"
With the implementation of the National Fire Plan -and that's a document that the secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, by order of the president, implemented this fall, last September. Part of that, one component of that, is the urban interface initiative. Grand Canyon has nine projects that have been funded under that program, to carry out. And these projects go over decades. Some of them are projected out to forty-two years to actually complete, because the amount of work is so -the labor is very intensive. And that's about a total of 6,000 acres, just at Grand Canyon: the mechanical fuel reduction to deal with the urban interface problem. And we've received funding, I believe, that area of $1.9 million, to help us do that. It's a big part of our program. It's very problematic, too, because you affect all kinds of different entities and variables, and people's homes, and it becomes personal, and you have to give it a lot of time and attention. But it's important. It's what we experienced last year, and that's kind of that reason behind the National Fire Plan is that the president asked the secretaries, "Come up with a plan that may prevent us, or help us from not going through what we went through in the year 2000" -he's talking about the American people -"burned down a lot of homes."
Everybody has their own idea of how something can be done. And with different groups being able to sue, there's no chance of moving ahead. I think they've done a wonderful job with the fire program they've got. Even with all of the opposition we've had to it, they've been able to at least get started on it. How long it will go, I don't know. But I do look at forestry now and think, "Boy, it's not the same job as it was when I looked at it when I got out of Forestry. You don't do the same things at all."