Under legislation passed by Congress last year, intended to reduce the threat of giant wildfires in the West, forest managers are required to take into account the dangers posed by not cutting trees when considering whether to go ahead with a project.

But the Government Accountability Office, which is Congress' investigative arm, said that “agencies must also assess the risks of effects from their actions to reduce fuels to ensure that they will not exacerbate existing resource problems or create new problems.”

The GAO looked at 10 reports and found that such reviews have been lacking.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, and Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett, disputed the findings, arguing that the risks of fuels reduction projects are being considered and reviews are being done, even if they aren't being done to GAO's liking.

Creating a one-size-fits-all method to measure the effects of forest projects, as GAO seems to advocate, is not possible, Rey and Scarlett argued.

Greg Aplet, a forest specialist with the Wilderness Society environmentalist group, said the Bush administration has been providing less and less information in its environmental assessments, to the point where it is running afoul of conservation laws.

“I am not at all surprised by GAO's findings,” he said . “Every time I look at an environmental assessment I'm appalled by the quality of environmental review. They tend to be vacuous documents.”