Refusing to acknowledge climate change’s role in the devastating fires, he blames the Democrat-led California for not ‘cutting more firebreaks’Charred vehicles litter the landscape after the Bear Fire burned through Berry Creek, California, on September 9 2020. Picture: REUTERS/FRED GREAVES— After a series of deadly wildfires scorched California in 2018, President Donald Trump ordered his federal agencies to do a better job of managing the vast federal forests under their care.
“This has nothing to do with fire management,” Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College in Claremont, California, said in an interview. “In truth, logging doesn’t prevent forest fires.” “They also have to do cuts. I mean, people don’t like to do cuts but they have to do cuts,” he said. “So if you do have a fire and it gets away, you’ll have a [50m] cut in between so it won’t be able to catch in the other side.”
“We can’t manage our way out of the current fire situation in the western US and what’s projected for the future,” McWethy said in a phone interview. “The scale of the problem is so large, with warming temperatures, all the projections are that we are going to have larger fires into the future.” Miller, with Pomona College, said intensive logging occurred about a decade ago in Butte County, California, which was home to the deadly Camp Fire in 2018. The county is again home to a wildfire that has burnt about 108,455 hectares, he said.