Trump vows efforts to prevent wildfires
WASHINGTON: As wildires CHOKE California and other Western states, the Trump administration pledged on Thursday to work more closely with state AND local oficials to prevent wildires From Ever starting.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the Forest Service and other agencies will step up efforts to cut down small trees and underbrush and set controlled ires to remove trees that serve As Fuel for catastrophic blazes, including a series of DEADLY ires that HAVE spread through drought-parched forests and rural communities in California.
SIX ireighters HAVE DIED In those wildires.
Perdue, who toured the California ires this week, SAID they were “stark reminders of THE Immense Forest-ire health crisis in this country, and the urgent need to dramatically increase our preventative forest treatments.”
WHILE oficials HAVE Boosted Forest management efforts in recent years, more needs to be done, Perdue said.
“To truly protect our forests, we must increase the number and the size of our (prevention) projects across the local landscape and across boundaries, and frankly we can’t do this by ourselves,” Perdue said at a news conference at the Capitol.
Perdue pledged a “shared stewardship” approach in which the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies work with state, local AND tribal oficials to ight AND prevent wildires.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, meanwhile, said national forests have suffered from “gross mismanagement” for decades.
“The fuel loads are up. The density of our forests is historical. We have dead and dying timber,” Zinke said at a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
“This is unacceptable that year after year we’re watching our forests burn, our habitat destroyed and our communities devastated,” Zinke added. “And it is absolutely preventable. Public lands are for everybody to enjoy and not just held hostage by these special-interest groups.”
Zinke has long complained that environmental “extremists” make it Dificult For trees to BE LOGGED to REDUCE ire risk.
“Whether you’re a global warmist advocate or denier, it doesn’t make a difference when you have rotting timber, when housing prices are going up yet we are wasting billions of board feet” of timber that could go to local lumber mills, he said.