WASHINGTON -- Federal officials clashed Tuesday over whether the Forest Service has a comprehensive strategy in place for managing wildfires, but agreed it will take decades of work to get the 80 million acres of high-risk public lands under control.

The wildfire potential in 2007 will be higher than normal in the Northern Rockies, the officials said. The federal government expects to spend between $1.1 billion and $1.25 billion nationwide on this year's fire season, they said.

The comments came at a hearing on wildfire preparedness by the House Natural Resources' forests and public lands subcommittee.

While the Forest Service and Interior Department have made some progress, the two agencies have yet to complete a cohesive wildfire strategy, testified Robin Nazzaro of the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO first called for such a strategy in 1999, and reiterated the need for it again in 2005. The GAO also said the agencies should submit a plan to Congress on the steps needed to develop the strategy and a timetable for when it could be finished.

"We still haven't seen the tactical plan nor the cohesive strategy at this point," Nazzaro said.

The strategy should address the full range of wildland fire management activities, identifying the available long-term options and funding needed for reducing excess vegetation and responding to fires, the GAO said.

In order to develop the strategy, the Forest Service first needed to complete some "key building blocks," she said. The tasks include finishing data systems like Landfire, a computer mapping system; updating local fire management plans; and assessing cost effectiveness.

"We had key elements that we felt were needed in this cohesive strategy," she said. "This was an investment strategy over the long term so we were looking for something that would be decades There are a lot of fuel treatments that are needed, and that's going to be very expensive."

The GAO next week will release a report on efforts to contain wildland fire costs.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said he has a "fundamental disagreement" with the GAO on the issue. He said long-term cost estimates mean little because conditions on the ground may change rapidly.

"Those far-out-year estimates are going to be worth about the paper they're printed on" several years later, he said.

Rey said the agencies released a strategy last fall to help prioritize fuel treatment needs.

"The debate that we should be having today is not whether we have a cohesive fuels strategy but rather whether all of the things that each of us thinks are necessary are included in that cohesive fuels strategy," Rey said.

Rey listed two criteria for prioritizing fuel treatment areas.

Community Wildfire Protection Plans, drawn up in local areas, tell the agency where fuels treatment should be done, he said. Then the agency looks at five factors: fire potential; the values at risk in the area, such as homes; the efficiency of the treatment proposed; the effectiveness it might have, and the potential for ecological restoration.

About 2,000 community plans exist and another 450 will be finalized this year, Rey said.

But Agriculture Deputy Inspector General Kathleen Tighe said an audit of the Forest Service found that while community plans are good at setting priorities, they had not been integrated on a national scale.

The audit from last September said the Forest Service did not have an analytical process for assessing wildfire risk to communities. It also found that the agency did not have the ability to ensure that the highest-priority projects would be funded first.

It also said the Forest Service needed better performance measures and reporting standards. The agency measures the number of acres treated, but the report called for a more meaningful measure, including whether high-priority areas were treated.

The Forest Service agreed and developed a plan for making changes. Tighe said the agency has been making progress and that her office would do a follow-up audit next year.

As for funding, subcommittee Chairman Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., criticized Bush's 2008 budget request for a $96 million cut in wildfire preparedness.

But Rey said the request reflected savings of between $130 million and $150 million that the Forest Service expects to see from cost-cutting efforts.

All officials agreed it will take decades to fix the problem. There are about 80 million high-priority acres that need to be treated on public lands, he said, while the government is treating 4 million to 5 million acres a year now.

Rey said the situation has been developing over a century.

"If we knew then what we know now, we might have approached fire suppression different," he said. "Where we're at today is we've accelerated the work to be done, but there's a lot left to be done. You don't solve a problem a century in the making in five or six years."

The public has finally realized that trees sometimes need to be cut to manage fire danger, he said. But there remain disagreements over what trees should be cut and how, he said.

But he said fuel treatment is having an effect because fewer houses have been lost to fire in recent years. About 3,000 and 2,000 homes were lost in 2002 and 2003 respectively, but that dropped to 700 last year despite a record fire season.

About 2 million acres in high-risk wildland-urban interface areas will be treated in 2007, said Interior Assistant Secretary Stephen Allred.

Rey said the government has treated nearly 25 million acres of at-risk federal lands between 2000 and 2007.

"Today we treat more fuels than ever and we collaborate with local, state and tribal partners more effectively than ever," Rey said.

The higher-than-normal wildfire potential comes from drought continuing across large parts of the West; low snow pack and early snow melt over most of the West; a projected hotter-than-normal summer for the West; and abundant fuels expected to "green up and cure early" in grasslands, Allred said.

Firefighters, equipment and aircraft are available on similar levels to 2006, he said.