Interior Department head blames environmentalists for California wildfires

I knew it. I was right again. This has been a huge problem in California for years.

You're simply swallowing more of the ignorance peddled by Trump's people and using it as evidence of being correct. Yoinks.

This is an environmental problem that cannot be reduced to politics or a single person.

Exactly! This calamity has been decades in the making and there is plenty of blame to go around. But pointing fingers is not going to make the threat go away. This problem is not insurmountable but politicizing it and competing in a game of dueling diatribes only makes a solution harder to achieve.

Someone in California needs to be fired or Imprisoned.

Someone liberal, I suspect you mean.

California is overpopulated, particularly in areas near wooded land. Combine that with an already dry climate exacerbated by global warming and you’ve got an ecological tinderbox. This is an environmental problem that cannot be reduced to politics or a single person.

I get it, but it doesn’t matter that liberals will come up with millions of excuses, this could have been avoided.

plenty of dead and dying trees also were also to blame.

But they never paid close attention to that. Someone in California needs to be fired or Imprisoned.

For millennia prior to the European discovery of what is now known as California, the native people maintained an ecologically balanced relationship with their environment which promoted the availability of useful resources and established a more stable environment. Early Spanish explorers wrote about vast parklike vistas of open grasslands punctuated by stands of oak. The open land was utilized for low intensity agriculture on a rotational basis and the oaks provided acorns which were an essential component of the native people's diet.

What the Europeans found was not a natural environment, what they found was an environment shaped and maintained by the native inhabitants. The native Californians were able to achieve this through their intimate understanding of their environment, it's natural cycles and through the use of controlled burning. By regularly conducting low intensity controlled fires the inhabitants kept the ground free of accumulated dead fall and brush while also benefiting from the temporary soil enrichment provided by the ash. The fires also kept the ground under the oaks clear of litter, this facilitated the gathering of acorns and removed fuel that if allowed to accumulate could feed wildfires that could injure or kill the tree.

Not all that long ago California used controlled burns as a fire abatement policy, and it helped. But in more recent times those kinds of policies have been discontinued. It is estimated that there are well over one hundred million dead trees in California's forests. Large tracts of forest land are littered with years of accumulated deadfall and are a tinderbox awaiting a spark. Recent wildfires in California have been so big because they have so much fuel to burn. That's an undeniable fact and it has nothing to do with Trump. If California doesn't want a repeat of this kind of thing it is going to have to clean up it's forests, simple as that. People can argue about why there is so much deadwood. Global warming, environmental policies, whatever. But the fact remains that the wood is there and if it isn't removed, it will burn.

Zinke first blamed environmentalists in an interview on Breitbart News after visiting communities hit by the California wildfires.

The mere mention of Breitbart should discredit this fool instantly.

Well stated.

Ryan Zinke - he of many ethical lapses shows he's also an imbecile...

The Washington Post revealed this week that Zinke remained involved with his foundation even after he took office as secretary of the interior, violating an ethics pledge he signed in January 2017. Emails showed that he was still coordinating the land deal as late as August 2017.

Another of one of "the best" - the best grifters, con-artists, and suck-ups - the only thing they all have in common is their incompetence...which they share with their President...

Zinke first blamed environmentalists in an interview on Breitbart News after visiting communities hit by the California wildfires.

The mere mention of Breitbart should discredit this fool instantly.

Yeah, cut down all the trees and areas will become like Malibu - or Laguna Beach - which never have fires. Idiot.

Enhanced fire prevention measures, building codes, and evacuation procedures are the only real defenses against the inevitable.

We already know just how IGNORANT Zinke is. Frankly, it's a disgrace.

"Radical environmental groups that would rather burn down the entire forest than cut a single tree or thin the forest,"

What a ridiculous comment. Zinke has no credibility.

Then again, he serves at the pleasure of the president, and the president is pleased with all lickspittles who offer unwavering loyalty.

or thin the forest," 

Lol, the Trumpet genius' solution to stop forest fires is to cut down forests.

Thinning forests is a legitimate practice politics aside.

Catch 22 for California.

I knew it. I was right again. This has been a huge problem in California for years.

Zinke did not name specific groups, saying he did not want to finger point.

Better to keep it vague, it makes it easier to hate...

He said other factors, such as hotter temperatures, historic drought conditions, and plenty of dead and dying trees also were also to blame.

Sane people understand that these are far bigger reasons for wildfires than a couple of lawsuits.

or thin the forest," 

Lol, the Trumpet genius' solution to stop forest fires is to cut down forests.

Controlled burns thin out the tinder.

https://www.newsweek.com/2018/10/05/california-wildfires-controlled-burns-save-forests-and-lives-1137693.html

Natural forest fires burn a few thousand acres, not millions of acres. Humans have to be involved to screw that up.

Conspiracy theory pushing republicans are hilarious. It's easier to denegrate those with disagree with via a conspiracy theory than actually researching and using facts.