An Arizona congressman's proposal to extend a popular program used to thin overgrown national forests yesterday was stripped from a House spending bill due to a possible violation of the lower chamber's "cut-go" rule, which requires lawmakers to offset new programs or expenditures with cuts elsewhere.

The amendment by Republican Rep. Jeff Flake would have added eight years to the Forest Service's stewardship contracting program, extending it through 2023. The program is set to expire in 2013 but would be extended through 2015 under the House's proposed fiscal 2012 spending bill for Interior, Forest Service and U.S. EPA.

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) told the Rules Committee that the Flake proposal, which was adopted by voice vote at last week's Appropriations Committee markup, violated chamber rules set by the Budget Committee.

"Stewardship contracting costs money," he said. "You have to pay for it."

Stewardship contracting was first established by Congress in 1999 as an experimental program that authorized the Forest Service to use receipts from timber contracts to help pay for restoration activities such as tree planting, pre-commercial thinning, trail maintenance, stream restoration and recreation projects.

The thinning and removal of small trees and undergrowth also helps prevent dangerous buildup that could lead to severe wildfire, said Flake spokeswoman Genevieve Frye Rozansky.

"These partnerships present a win-win situation," she said. "Thinning contributes to greater forest health and local economies that rely on the timber industry are stimulated."

Flake and others have argued recently that timber thinning projects are needed to prevent severe wildfires such as Arizona's Wallow and Horseshoe Two fires.

"We have to work with the Budget Committee to make sure what we do next year does the extension like the Forest Service would like to do," Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the subcommittee that funds the Forest Service, told E&E Daily. "I was surprised, frankly, that during debate there was even objection to it ... because, frankly, people on both sides think this is a good thing."

Dale Bosworth, former Forest Service chief under the George W. Bush administration, said he was surprised to hear the stewardship extension was removed because it helps the agency cut costs for thinning projects needed to prevent wildfires.

"During a tough time, it makes even more sense to have that flexibility," he said. "That can help forests get the job done for less money."

He pointed to a project in Louisiana's Kisatchie National Forest during his tenure in which a company offered to thin a forest for $1 an acre instead of the $150 an acre it would have cost under normal circumstances. The company used the small-diameter trees to make wood chips for landscaping, while sparing larger diameter trees for the federally protected red-cockaded woodpecker, he said.

"If someone can utilize it, even though it's not worth the amount to take it out, you can get your cost down," he said.

A long-term extension is also important to convince agency staff that the program's collaborative partnerships are worth their time, he said.

"If Forest Service people say, 'Well, we're no longer going to have that program,' and it does take a lot of collaboration to work ... a lot of people might say, 'We might as well go to our old processes because we're not going to have that in the future,'" he said.

The program has been used successfully in places such as Montana's Lolo National Forest in 2001 to thin about 640 acres of timber near the East Fork of the Clearwater River. Revenues were used to remove harmful roads, improve viewsheds and install new low-polluting toilets, among other things.