President Bush has announced the easing of logging regulations and reduction of environmental reviews to speed the removal of timber from fire-prone US forests.
Administration officials said the move was prompted by a series of wildfires that have scorched more than 5.9 million acres of forest land so far this year - an area the size of New Hampshire and twice the annual average.
Mr Bush will announce the plan during a visit to Oregon, one of many western states devastated by wildfires.
The White House said the thinning of forests to reduce the density of trees should mean fewer devastating forest fires, which they said can release the "energy equivalent of an atomic bomb and destroy, rather than renew, our forests".
But environmental groups said efforts to thin the forests were an attempt to remove older trees that are coveted by large timber companies.
"They are going to use the emotional tragedy of the fires to try and obtain something that the public otherwise wouldn't support, increasing the amount of logging on our public lands," said a spokesman for the Wilderness Society environmental group.