CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

TRUMP, on California Gov. Gavin Newsom: “Talking about forests — clean up your forests; you won’t have forest fires. Clean them up. He blames it on global warming. I said, ‘ No, try cleaning the floor of the forest a little bit so you don’t have four feet of leaves and broken trees that have sit there for 25 years.’ ... It’s called ‘forest management.’” — remarks to National Association of Realtors on Friday.

THE FACTS: Both nature and humans share responsibility for California’s devastating wildfires, but fire scientists say forest management is not the main contributor. And most of California’s forests are controlled by the federal government, not the state.

Nature provides the dangerous winds that have whipped the fires, and human-caused climate change over the long haul is killing and drying the shrubs and trees that provide the fuel. That’s not to say California is blameless: Urban development encroaching on wildlands also is a factor. But about 19 million or 57 percent of California’s 33 million acres of forests are managed or owned by the federal government, according to the University of California.

Last year’s wildfire that incinerated the Northern California town of Paradise and surrounding areas was the single deadliest such blaze in California history.

Another recent major fire, in Southern California, burned through shrubland, not forest.

“It’s not about forest management,” said University of Utah fire scientist Philip Dennison at the time. “These aren’t forests.”

The dean of the University of Michigan’s environmental school, Jonathan Overpeck, said Western fires are getting bigger and more severe. He said it “is much less due to bad management and is instead the result of our baking of