You can’t make this stuff up: Zinke Announces Plan to Fight Wildfires With More Logging

SWAMP WATCH: Gift to loggers:

“Trump’s proposed 2019 budget reportedly includes cuts to firefighting efforts, including for wildfire research.  Zinke said he’s redirecting money to be used for the removal of “dead and dying” trees, some of which can be “salvaged” for timber. He has also called for “robust fuels reduction,” including “timber harvests.” He complained that “radical environmentalists” would “rather see forests and communities burn than see a logger in the woods.”

Zinke Announces Plan to Fight Wildfires With More Logging

The Trump administration announced a new plan Thursday to fight ongoing wildfires with more logging, and with no mention of additional funding or climate change.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke stated in a Fox Business interview that the fires are so intense because the forests have “been held hostage by environmental groups” to prevent proper management via logging, and that climate change is “irrelevant.”

But when asked later by Weijia Jang of CBS, Zinke said “of course” climate change is part of the science explaining the wildfires. Then, at a cabinet meeting Thursday afternoon, President Trump asked Zinke to repeat his assertion that “it’s not a global warming thing.”

“Zinke, like Trump, continues to deny the obvious,” Kirin Kennedy, associate legislative director for lands and wildlife for the Sierra Club, said in an email, Bloomberg reported. “It is climate change that is exacerbating wildfire season in the West.”

Ryan Zinke Tells California How To Stop Wildfires: Cut Down Trees

The interior secretary blamed environmental groups for blocking logging on public land.