Some Democrats and environmental groups said the bill promoted logging at the expense of environmental protection and failed to direct enough money to forest-thinning projects near homes.

"We are seeing the tragic consequences brought on by years of unwise forest policy," Bush said before signing the bill at the U.S. Agriculture Department. This legislation "takes a major step forward in protecting America's forests."

After forest fires burned much of the Western United States last year, Bush unveiled his so-called "healthy forest" proposal to cut procedural delays at federal agencies and to develop new ways to reduce the threat of wildfires on 10 million acres of fire-prone forest.

The bipartisan-crafted bill incorporating those ideas, passed by Congress in November, envisages $760 million being spent annually in an attempt to prevent wildfires.

HUGE FIRE THREAT

The U.S. Forest Service, a division of the USDA, estimated a total of 190 million acres of forest land in the United States is susceptible to fires.

Efforts to pass a forest-thinning bill took on a greater sense of urgency in late October when fires scorched more than 750,000 acres in Southern California, killing nearly two dozen people and destroying 3,400 homes.

In the last two years, more than 11 million acres of U.S. land was burned by wildfires.