U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said regarding California's deadly wildfires that it's not time now to jump over conclusions and start pointing fingers when the actual culprit is already known.
Zinke attacked "radical environmentalists" for a lack of forest management that he says are spreading the infernos.
Zinke said: "This is where America stands. It's not the time for finger-pointing. We know the problem: it's been years of neglect, and in many cases, it's been these radical environmentalists that want nature to take its course," and he proceeds his talk by saying: "We have dead and dying timber. We can manage it using best science, best practices. But to let this devastation go on year after year after year is unacceptable."
zinke comment comes after The Trump administration’s response to the devastating fires still raging across California has been deeply disappointing, even by their incredibly low standard. After Donald Trump blamed the fires on forest management and said that we need to “rake the forest floor.”
zink applauded the president's conclusions and added: "We need to actively manage our forests, and the president is absolutely right," Zinke said. "This is as much about mismanagement over time -- it wasn't just the last administration. This has been going on for years."
however, Trump's conclusions were doubted by Chad Hanson, a research ecologist with the John Muir Project and a national director of the Sierra Club
Hanson wrote: "It is deeply troubling that Trump and his administration would support logging as a way to curb fires when studies have shown it's ineffective."
then he stated the actual cause by saying that "forests with the fewest environmental protections and the most logging actually tend to burn much more intensely, not less."
