Endangered species are getting less priority while environmental reviews and public appeals are being reduced and in some cases eliminated, all part of the "Healthy Forests" initiative Bush outlined in August for thinning overgrown woodlands prone to wildfires.

When Congress balked, Bush went around it with new regulations that could be implemented without changing laws.

After the November election, when his fellow Republicans took control of the Senate and increased their majority in the House, Congress checked off two more items on the administration's wish list.

All but one of the five regulatory changes that the president sought are approaching the finish line.

Two shorten or skip environmental reviews, one limits public appeals and another requires various agencies to coordinate their endangered species studies. A fifth, still in the works, would reduce time spent on endangered species reviews.

Friday, the administration recommended that Congress create no more wilderness areas in the 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the nation's largest. Ninety-two percent of Tongass already is off-limits to timber production.

In early February, Congress precluded environmentalists from going to court to challenge that recommendation. Lawmakers also tucked into a giant spending bill language allowing logging companies and other contractors to keep trees they harvest in exchange for reducing undergrowth, which helps start wildfires.

The U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, which together manage more than 450 million acres of government land, can now issue 10-year contracts for that work with no limits on the size of trees that can be cut.

Bush and his aides seized on several years of drought and huge wildfires in the West to make their case for the changes. Last year, more than 7 million acres burned and the government spent more than $1.5 billion fighting wildfires -- triple the amount budgeted.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said 2003 "is shaping up to be a difficult year" and could be the worst fire season ever; the governors of Nebraska and Kansas each told her it is the driest year in their states since the 1930s Dust Bowl.

To environmentalists, the administration's approach to forest management is less about preventing wildfires than opening up more resource-rich federal land to timber and mining interests.

Jim Lyons, a Yale University forestry professor and former Agriculture Department undersecretary who supervised the Forest Service in the Clinton administration, said the White House appears intent on returning to the policy of the mid-1980s, when the Forest Service and the BLM had free rein to harvest timber.

"They're cutting the public out of the process, they're using trees to generate revenue to do this forest health and treatment work they want to do, and they're eliminating any substantive environmental review from the process," Lyons said.

In January, the Forest Service proposed excluding timber sales involving less than 250 acres and a half-mile of temporary roads from environmental reviews. Again, the government said it was motivated by the need to reduce wildfire risks by removing dead and dying trees.

Michael Klein, a spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Association, the timber industry's trade group, said the Bush administration's approach will help nudge the Forest Service toward better management of woodlands.

"It means just not sitting back and letting nature takes it course, but taking an active hand," he said.

The administration now wants Congress, in the name of fire prevention, to exempt up to 10 million more acres of national forests from environmental reviews and citizen appeals, eliminate administrative appeals for Forest Service decisions and direct courts to give more weight to the risks of inaction when thinning projects are challenged.

At a glance

Changes in forest policy that the Bush administration has proposed or put in place by changing regulations or getting Congress to change laws:

REGULATIONS

-Proposed categories of projects that could be excluded from environmental reviews.

-Issued new guidance for how agencies conduct environmental assessments.

-Issued new guidance for how field biologists at six natural resources agencies deal with endangered species.

-Proposed shortening the appeals process for forest decisions.

-Proposed streamlining endangered species work between the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service.

-Proposed excluding timber sales of less than 250 acres and a half-mile of temporary roads from environmental reviews.

-Drafting a new rule to replace the Clinton-era "roadless" rule that bars most logging and road-building on 58.5 million acres of national forest land.

LAWS

-Won approval from Congress in its spending bill for logging companies and other contractors to pay themselves in harvested trees if they contract to reduce undergrowth, build roads or undertake other activities.

-Won approval from Congress to block environmentalists from challenging the Forest Service's decision to recommend that Congress create no more wilderness areas within Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

-Proposed having Congress exempt up to 10 million additional acres of national forests from environmental reviews and citizen appeals for logging decisions. Congress rejected that proposal last year.

-Proposed that Congress drop administrative appeals of Forest Service decisions that are required because of old budget language.

-Proposed that Congress direct courts to give more weight to the advantages of thinning forests during challenges by environmentalists.