Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blames ‘radical environmental groups.’
Just days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told Californians that it’s not time for “finger pointing” on the cause of the state’s wildfires, he blamed “radical environmental groups” for getting in the way of sound forest management and fanning the flames.
The Interior secretary joined Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Tuesday in calling for more clearing of the thick, fire-prone vegetation that has helped spread the recent blazes, including the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County. Both Cabinet members minimized the role of other factors like climate change in boosting fire activity and singled out environmentalists for opposing fuel-reduction work.
“Let’s take a look at who is suing. Every time there is a thinning project out, who is suing,” Zinke said during a joint media call with Perdue.
He claimed “radical environmental groups” would “rather burn down the entire forest than cut a single tree.”
The two pushed for amendments to the Farm Bill, currently being debated in Congress, to loosen rules on tree removal and herbicide use on federal timber lands. Zinke oversees the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service while Perdue oversees the U.S. Forest Service.
Their call with reporters Tuesday continues a steady push by the Trump administration to pin the wildfire problem squarely on forest management, a notion that fire experts say vastly oversimplifies the issue.
While environmental groups have used the courts to stop logging projects that might have helped minimize fire risk, the danger in California’s wildlands goes far beyond any lack of forest clearing. The problem, experts say, rests in the warming climate, too much development in fire-prone areas and decades of fire suppression that has helped build up flammable fuels.
Moreover, many of California’s recent fires have not even burned in forests, but in grasslands and oak-filled prairie.
“Sadly, Zinke is using the Camp Fire and the tragic loss of lives for political gain,” said Randi Spivak, public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “He’s pushing his agenda (that) environmental regulations are bad, we need more resource extraction, we need more logging.”
Spivak said her organization, which has sued to stop logging projects, has never tried to limit thinning efforts around fire-affected communities, only large-scale, tree-removal work that threatens wildlife and forest habitat.
Federal records compiled by the Center for Biological Diversity show that about 7 percent of the vegetation management projects on Forest Service lands in California and Hawaii between 2009 and 2017 were challenged in court.
Last Wednesday, Zinke visited the burned-out town of Paradise, where he met Gov. Jerry Brown for a tour of the fire devastation, and said it wasn’t time to cast blame for the recent blazes.
The Camp Fire, which ignited Nov. 8 in the hills of Butte County, has burned 152,250 acres and killed at least 81 people. In Southern California, the Woolsey Fire has charred 96,949 acres and killed at least three.
President Trump also visited burned areas in California over the weekend, not shying away from complaining about a lack of forest management. He even suggested “raking” forest floors as a solution to the wildfire problem.
On Tuesday, Zinke acknowledged that hotter temperatures and a longer fire season were also driving California’s surge in fire, but neither he nor Perdue advocated policies to address the changing climate. The Trump administration has sought to roll back many of the Obama-era regulations designed to limit global warming.
Perdue, who plans to visit Butte County on Monday, added that he was not looking for more money to expand forest management. He noted that a budgetary change at the U.S. Forest Service, beginning next year, will increase spending on fuel-reduction efforts by allowing the agency to use federal disaster funds, instead of its own reserve, to fight wildfires.
Perdue and Zinke said legislative fixes, starting with the Farm Bill, would allow them to expedite sorely needed work in western forests.
“We’re not talking about clear-cutting,” Perdue said. “We’re talking about good forest management that makes sense.”