As part of the initiative, the president has called on Congress to reduce the red tape forest managers must wade through before thinning forests. This is what Congress agreed to do in the Black Hills of South Dakota earlier this summer at the urging of Sen. Tom Daschle. It's what we need to do across the West. We are now formulating proposals for reasonable reforms. As its name suggests, however, the Healthy Forests Initiative is about more than stopping catastrophic fires. It's about restoring our forest ecosystems to health and providing good habitat for wildlife.

Some environmentalists ["Fighting Wildfires Where the Risks Are," op-ed, Aug. 28] have criticized the initiative, arguing that we should thin trees just in the "urban interface" where residential areas meet the forests. In essence, they say that we should address forest ecosystem health only in areas where there is a direct impact on humans.

Obviously it is important to take steps to reduce fire danger around homes. The Interior and Agriculture departments recently agreed to work with states and local governments to set priorities on thinning projects.

But we should also recognize the negative effects of overcrowded forests on wildlife and the widespread need for active forest management.

White-crowned sparrows, western bluebirds, rufous hummingbirds, white-headed woodpeckers, Lewis's woodpeckers and other forest birds historically common to the West are being pushed out of many forests. Their problem isn't too few trees, it's too many trees.

These birds need the relatively open forests that greeted Lewis and Clark, but a century of fire suppression has left western forests overgrown, in many places 15 times denser and choked with undergrowth. As a result, populations of such birds are much lower in these forests than in other areas where foresters have maintained a natural density of trees and brush through either prescribed burns or thinning.

The long-term effects of catastrophic fires can be severe. Unlike natural fires that clear underbrush and leave mature trees standing, these fires consume everything in their path and scorch the earth with intense heat.

Likewise, fires in overly dense forests pose a threat to many threatened and endangered species. Biologists, for example, have identified catastrophic fire as the biggest threat to the threatened Mexican spotted owl, which lives in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The Biscuit Fire in Oregon has destroyed at least 125,000 acres of habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl.

Frequently cutting down small trees and removing undergrowth are beneficial to wildlife and ecosystem health. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists estimate that 46 species of western forest birds, including 13 species that are of great concern to wildlife biologists, would benefit from better management of our forests.

With more than 190 million acres of federal land at high risk of catastrophic fire -- an area twice the size of California -- we must take action.

The president's initiative directs federal agencies to improve regulatory processes to reduce the risk of wildfires more effectively and quickly. It also calls on Congress to give federal agencies expanded authority to manage public land, reduce accumulated fuel, enter into land stewardship agreements with the private sector and local governments, and lessen the threat to people and communities posed by wildfires.

The continuing threat to both people and wildlife is real. We must cut the red tape and restore the health of our forests.

The writer is U.S. secretary of the interior.