CENTRAL POINT - Republicans on Friday joined the Congressional debate over thinning national forests to prevent wildfires with a bill that includes unchecked power for the Bush administration to authorize 1,000-acre clearcuts in the name of controlling insects.

Speaking at a U.S. Forest Service tree nursery here, Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said the Healthy Forest Restoration Act put together by himself and Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., would provide for aggressive thinning in national forests tempered by streamlined public appeals.

But it was quickly criticized by Democrats who have offered their own bill to reduce wildfire risks by promoting national forest thinning around rural communities while maintaining public oversight.

"Discretionary 1000-acre clearcuts don't pass the laugh test," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who with Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., has offered an alternative wildfire prevention bill.

"I've got to assume that either this gets removed from the bill or this is just another attempt to produce something that might excite some constituency but will be doomed to the congressional wastebasket."

DeFazio noted that a promising effort to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act six years ago was not brought to the floor of the House by the Republican majority leadership after a similar effort to transform it.

Miller criticized Republicans for releasing the bill just days before it is to be marked up in the House Resources Committee next Wednesday, allowing no time for interested parties to offer comments.

"The only way to rebuild the trust between local communities, conservation interests, impacted businesses, and federal agencies is to have a vigorous, informed and public debate on policy and on proposed projects," Miller said.

Republicans and Democrats had reached a compromise on a wildfire prevention bill last year, but ran out of time to enact it before the end of the session.

Focusing on the wildfire section of the bill, Walden said it holds, "great promise to help us prevent catastrophic fire, produce healthier forests, safer communities and jobs in rural areas.

"We have professionals here who go out and know what needs to be done in the forest. We employ them to do that. Now we should change the bureaucracy and the rules and laws so they can do the jobs they were trained to do."

Walden noted that the bill codifies the widely supported process created by the Western Governors Association to give the public a say over forest thinning projects while speeding up the work.

Walden suggested there would be room to compromise on the section of the new bill that would give the secretaries of Agriculture and Interior authority to approve timber harvests as big as 1,000 acres without environmental review while developing programs to control insect infestation.

The insect provision was aimed at forests in the South suffering widespread infestations, not the West, Walden said.

"As this legislation moves forward my hunch is there are sections" that may be changed, Walden said. "But we've got to get this moving."

Walden said he looked forward to working with DeFazio.

"There are going to be a lot of discussions that take place between here and when the gavel falls," Walden said. "Mr. DeFazio and I worked closely on these issues in the past. We've had discussions in general terms about our legislative endeavors in this area."

The bill defines the purpose of the section on insects as developing a program to combat bark beetle infestations with help from universities, and to "carry out applied silvicultural assessments."

Applied silvicultural assessments are defined in the bill as timber harvest, thinning, prescribed burning, and pruning on any federal lands not protected from logging, such as wilderness areas and national parks.

The section also makes "applied silvicultural assessments" exempt from any environmental review by classifying them as what are known as a categorical exclusions, which are assumed to have no significant environmental impact.

Andy Stahl of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics said the insect section of the bill dwarfed the significance of the wildfire section, which is largely similar to the bill offered by DeFazio and Miller.

"You can solve people's fire risk by treating peoples' back yards, not the woods, so they've found a new excuse - the rapacious bug," Stahl said of Republicans. "They spend five pages in this bill trying to turn these bugs into Godzilla the Gorilla of the Forest."

The bill also includes a section allowing the secretaries of Agriculture and Interior to pay private landowners to enroll up to 1 million acres in a Healthy Forests Reserve to provide habitat for threatened and endangered species.