Column: Climate change and lax forest management fuel wildfires
There's no denying climate change is making wildfires worse.
Some still try, but their arguments run counter to the facts, the conclusions of the scientific community and what's happening before their eyes. What was projected by experts years ago is occurring right now.
At the same time, lax forest and wildland management in years past has contributed to the problem. Gov.
"We're in the midst of a climate emergency," the governor said from a fire zone in
He also acknowledged more should have been done on the ground.
"I am not going to say that the forest management practices in
"That's one point," he added about management, "but it's not the point."
Newsom is a leading voice on the need to reverse climate change, and has pushed policies aimed in that direction. Last week, he pledged to take even more aggressive action.
"Across the entire spectrum, our goals are inadequate," Newsom said.
Meanwhile, he has moved to improve forest management. The day after being sworn in as governor on
Despite ongoing tensions with President
That's no small matter, though it may not seem like much at the moment, with more than 3.2 million acres of
Like just about everything else, discussion about what and who is responsible for the firestorms has become political. The Republican president lays the blame entirely on poor forest management, dismissing climate change in general and specifically as a factor in the fires.
The Democratic governor says climate change is the real culprit. Scientists back him up, with some saying the level of forest management had little, if anything to do with the intense fires in recent years. In 2018, experts pointed out that some fires burned in areas where fires raged not many years before, reducing the undergrowth often pinpointed as prime fuel for wildfires, according to The Associated Press.
That dispute played out Monday during Trump's visit to
But as Newsom has shown, land management shouldn't be dismissed. Besides, tackling climate change requires a long-range, global effort that may or may not come together. Clearing out dead trees, undergrowth and dense chaparral in various regions _ including the use of controlled or prescribed burns in some cases _ is something that can be done relatively quickly, though it must be sustained.
In a report responding to Newsom's executive order,
Last week, the governor said all of those projects have been completed, maintaining they "would have taken 10 years to do before. We've done [them] in 15 months."
"But that's not just the issue here in
A group of
"The excuse of climate change cannot be used to deflect from the fundamental failure to address the fuels build-up in our forests that are the cause of these devastating fires," they said in a statement as the governor toured the fire zone. "Two years of long-awaited forestry management investments don't make up for decades of inaction by Democratic politicians who control this state, and the radical environmentalists that drive their agenda."
Newsom and others have pointed out that many of the fires are burning on federal lands in
A report by the Legislative Analyst's Office in 2018 noted the complexity of forest management given the multiple agencies that need to be involved, including the federal government. The report also said that policies over the past several decades have limited timber harvesting, emphasized fire suppression and increased environmental permitting requirements.
"These practices and policies have combined to constrain the amount of trees and other growth removed from the forest," according to the report. "This has significantly increased the density of trees in forests across the state, and particularly the prevalence of smaller trees and brush.
"Overall tree density in the state's forested regions increased by 30 percent between the 1930s and the 2000s."
The report goes on to say that healthy forests play an important role in combating climate change because trees absorb and store carbon dioxide, thus reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Large older trees do more of this than smaller ones.
The dense conditions of the state's forests, in which smaller trees overcrowd and inhibit the growth of larger ones, "represent a lost opportunity to sequester" greenhouse gases, according to the report.
That can become part of a grim cycle, the report suggests: Dead trees help fuel wildfires, which release a lot of carbon into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.
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