Zinke get it right: Environmentalists outraged as Ryan Zinke says California fires have nothing to do with climate change

Environmentalists criticized Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Monday for blaming the wildfires raging through California on forest management and claiming that climate change has not played a role in the blazes. Zinke, on a two-day tour of areas devastated by the Carr Fire in Redding, Calif., downplayed the importance of managing global warming in addressing the fires on Sunday. “I’ve heard the climate change argument back and forth,” Zinke said in an interview with a local television station, KCRA 3. “This has nothing to do with climate change. This has to do with active forest management.” Conservation groups said that Zinke and the Trump administration are purposely ignoring climate change for political reasons. “Secretary Zinke is either being willfully ignorant or purposely deceptive,” said Greg Zimmerman, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities. “Any politician ignoring the role a warming climate plays in record-setting wildfire seasons loses all credibility as an honest broker. Instead, Zinke is in California using an ongoing natural disaster to push an unpopular political agenda.” Zinke, however, in comments to local media Sunday, amplified the Trump administration’s push for improvements to forest management policies, rather than blaming climate change. He accused environmentalists of holding up forest management projects, which involve the removal of trees and vegetation in forests to take away fuel for fires. “We need to manage our forests, we need to reduce the fuels,” Zinke said in comments reported by the Sacramento Bee. “The public lands belong to everybody, not just the special interest groups."...MORE