Romney calls for early detection, logging to stop wildfires
Romney, a candidate in
"If the devastation of wildfires were being caused by a foreign enemy rather than by natural causes, we would do and spend whatever it took to stop it," he wrote.
Zinke took aim at "radical environmentalists," who oppose logging, but Romney said there could be common ground if stopping fires meant saving animals and habitat.
Romney's Democratic
"We must address climate change as a national crisis in order to protect the American West," she said in a statement.
Romney said he also wants to beef up regional firefighter resources and create an early detection system of drones, satellites and sensors. Romney's campaign didn't provide additional detail on his ideas.
Fire experts said an early detection system isn't at the top of their wish list. The
"We believe that prevention, preparedness and suppression response capacity should be the top priorities for investment," said
Such a system would likely be expensive and would only help with a small portion of wildfires — ones that start at night when people are asleep and are fast-moving near urban areas, said
"Detection of wildfires is not really a problem," Cova said. More logging would help but wouldn't solve the problem, he said.
Firefighters use human spotters in lookout towers. There are also cameras placed on existing cell towers on mountaintops in many Western states, including
Wildfires are a confluence of many factors, including longer, hotter summers, she said.
"We're seeing more of a fire year whereas we were seeing fire seasons in the past," she said.
Nearly 1,000 fires large and small have been sparked in
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