This article discusses the approach being taken by the US Forest Service, emphasizing science and a changing climate.
As wildfires continue to rage across the West during a brutally hot summer, on Thursday the US Forest Service released its new forest fire management strategy that focuses on science and the changing climate. The report comes at the same time the president has sent out misleading tweets about the causes and solutions of California’s wildfires, and as Donald Trump’s Interior head Ryan Zinke has blamed fires on environmentalists, denied climate change science, and called for more logging.
Zinke has said the forest fires have “nothing to do with climate change” and recently called the left “angry,” “intolerant” and “uninformed” on the environment and public land management, according to the Huffington Post.
But the Department of the Interior disputes this in an email to Mother Jones, saying, “The Secretary addressed the correlation between climate and fires dozens of times over the 48 hours he was in California and all week in interviews since returning. Additionally, in his op-ed, the Secretary directly addressed longer, hotter, drier seasons in the opening paragraphs.” It’s true that Zinke changed his tune—after his earlier comments, Zinke told reporters Thursday that climate change has played a role in the fires and that global temperatures are rising.