WASHINGTON - As California nears the peak of its fire season, Sen. Dianne Feinstein is putting pressure on the U.S. Forest Service to allocate more money to remove dead trees from the San Bernardino National Forest.

In a letter to Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, Feinstein wrote that the budget to reduce fire hazards in the San Bernardino Mountains and Southern California's three other national forests is about $40 million short.

"There is no greater priority than protecting lives and homes, and no place in the country where as many lives and homes are at risk to forest fires as Southern California," Feinstein wrote in the letter dated Tuesday.

Officials with the Forest Service's regional office in Vallejo in Northern California told Feinstein aides that the agency needs $46.4 million annually to remove dead and dying trees from the four forests.

The 2006 Interior Department spending bill, which funds the Forest Service, allocated $7.5 million to pay for tree removal in the four Southern California forests.

Of that, $5 million will go directly to the San Bernardino National Forest, at the request of Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee.

Last year, Lewis secured $30 million for tree-removal reduction in the annual Pentagon spending bill.

Howard Gantman, a spokesman for Feinstein, who has secured forest funding through her position on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers can earmark money, but that they can "only go so far."

The Forest Service needs to find other resources to combat the problem, Feinstein said in her letter.

Matt Mathes, a Forest Service regional spokesman, said there are 14 other national forests in California and 156 national forests throughout the country in 40 states.

"They all have fuel-reduction needs, too," Mathes said.

Mathes said the Forest Service is grateful for the $5 million in the spending bill for the San Bernardino National Forest and will use it "as efficiently as possible."

Daniel Jiron, a spokesman for Rey, said fire prevention and fuel reduction is and has been a priority for the Forest Service.

"There are other parts of the country that need attention also," Jiron said. "We distribute those based on need ... and as fairly as we can across the country."

More than a third of the forest's 36 million trees died during six years of drought and insect infestation. To ease the threat, the U.S. Forest Service has removed brush and dead trees from more than 11,000 acres in the past year. But a new forest-management plan says that more than twice that amount -- 25,100 acres -- should be thinned annually.

Forest Supervisor Gene Zimmerman and Mike Dietrich, fire chief for the San Bernardino National Forest, could not be reached for comment.