Bush Proposes Huge Growth in Forest Funding : Environment: The U.S. contribution to woodlands protection would increase by 125%. Preservation groups criticize the plan.

WASHINGTON — President Bush, hoping to deflect criticism of his record on the eve of the environmental summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro, proposed Monday that the industrial world double its commitment to forest protection and announced a 125% increase in U.S. funding for that purpose.

With the largest environmental gathering in history only two days away, Bush has been put on the defensive by his refusal to sign one of two key treaties and by his Administration’s tough position on a global-warming agreement.

Under the President’s proposal, developed nations would boost their contributions to international forest conservation from $1.35 billion to $2.7 billion. The United States’ own participation would be increased to $270 million from $120 million.

The existing programs include such efforts as forest management training, tree planting and harvesting, technical assistance and loans in exchange for leaving trees unharvested.

“Halting the loss of the Earth’s forests is one of the most cost-effective steps that we can take to cut carbon dioxide emissions,” Bush said. “When we go to Rio, the U.S. will go proudly as the world’s leader, not just in environmental research but in environmental action.”

His proposal, however, immediately drew criticism from two leading Senate Democrats and from environmental groups.

“The President deserves credit for this new plan, but let’s see it for what it is: a diversion, a clumsy attempt to keep attention away from even clumsier policy,” said Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate delegation to the Rio meeting. “I’m not sure I’d put the trees in my back yard in his care, because I’m not convinced he wouldn’t have a chain saw in his trunk.”

Similarly, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), like Gore one of the Senate’s leading proponents of protection for the environment, said that the announcement, while “commendable,” was intended “to camouflage” the Administration’s positions on a variety of environmental issues--such as its reluctance to set target levels or timetables for reducing the pollution that is believed to cause global warming.

And Roni Lieberman, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, said that the President’s proposal was “too little, too late.”

Administration officials were unable to say where the added money would come from and how it would fit into budget requirements that all new expenses must be offset by new revenues or reductions in other programs.

At the heart of the program is an effort to relieve some of the pressure that expanding urbanization and the need for farmland have put on forests, both in the Third World and the developed countries.

According to the White House, tropical forests are being destroyed at the rate of at least 42 million acres a year. In addition, 50% or more of the temperate forests in Europe are being damaged by air pollution.

The losses are felt in multiple ways, including the tendency of the Earth’s average temperature to increase--the phenomenon known as global warming--and the disappearance of threatened species when wooded habitat is lost.

The President unveiled his plan in a speech to employees at the Goddard Space Flight Center in suburban Maryland.

It follows by three days the disclosure that the United States would not sign a treaty designed to protect wildlife and its habitat around the world--one of the centerpieces of the Rio summit--out of concern that it would inhibit the biotechnology industry in the United States and would require a broadening of the Endangered Species Act, which is under fire from business interests and political conservatives.

After touring the space center, which is responsible for some of the key National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellites tracking environmental conditions, Bush said in his speech that he has tried to provide environmental leadership “in a way that is compatible with economic growth.”