Donald Trump, Forest Fires, and Climate Change

November 12, 2018 – “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!” – Donald Trump on Twitter, November 10, 2018.

There are so many things wrong with this insensitive, less-than-presidential reaction to the disastrous reoccurrence of wildfires in California. Let’s parse the content.

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires…..”

Let me suggest one very big reason.

Climate change. California has been experiencing severe drought conditions. An agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), monitors the intensity of drought across the country. On November 6, 2018 the map for California showed the entire state as abnormally dry to exceptional drought. Trump doesn’t seem to know that during the previous six-year drought in California, almost 130 million trees died because of the abnormally dry conditions. Clearing dead wood and dry brush has become an important aspect of forest management. But the trees keep dying and keeping up doing ground clearance to limit what could become kindling is an arduous task.

The map below is the first exhibit that should have been shown to the President before he started tweeting. But I guess there was no time to put in his briefing book.

“in California…..”

Trump is not a great fan of this west coast state. It didn’t vote for him in the presidential election, and in the mid-terms it returned far more Democrats than Republicans to both the U.S. Congress and to the state legislature. If the state had been a Wisconsin, Kansas, or one of the Dakotas I wonder if this tweet would have been similarly composed.

“forest management is so poor….“

On the U.S. Department of Agriculture website, you can find a portal to the California’s Forest Management Plan including conservation planning, ecological studies, land use data, maps and analysis and more. The document template located here is designed for local counties and forest resource managers to submit their ground practices related to land management. In every case fire management is covered with a degree of thoroughness that exceeds most other state standards. From air quality to soil to plant materials, the coverage is comprehensive. The plan includes maps, satellite and air photo imagery, and a resource database. If this is poor, then what is rich.

“gross mismanagement of the forests…..”

There are few places that manage forests better than California considering the contribution the trees make to the state’s image. Giant Redwoods and Sequoias are among the most iconic symbols of California’s conservation efforts.

The reality is that California draws people to it and more and more are moving to the edge of urban centres where they are building homes next to the natural wilderness. It is this urban sprawl that has made wildfires far more dangerous than in the past. The California Department of Insurance has published a map that defines the urban-wilderness interface and it correlates directly to where wildfires naturally or human created happen.

In a recent study by the University of Colorado, it reported that humans were responsible for starting 84% of wildfires in California over the last 20 years with the top 10 causes listed below:

Only 34 cases out of 2,032, (1.7%) represent activities attributable to those in forestry management. The remaining 98% the study linked directly to human-forest interaction which encroachment on the wilderness enables.

Trump may not know it but an old standard practice for forestry management almost universal to North America does play a part. Referred to as the Smokey the Bear policy, wildfires in public forests are subjected to too much interference in trying to contain or prevent natural burns. Natural burns create open spaces that form fire breaks. By suppressing small fires, a common practice in California and elsewhere, we interfere with the natural fire cycle. By preserving trees that normally would we leave forests more congested and trees competing for a finite amount of water. Add drought to the mix and we exacerbate conditions for wildfire outbreaks. And finally, by preserving trees in close proximity to each other it makes them far more susceptible to invasive insects that end up killing whole stands of forest and turning trees into potential kindling.

“so many lives lost…”

The lives lost reference is buried in the President’s tweet when, in my opinion, it should have been the centerpiece of his response. The death toll stands at 31 with more than 200 still missing.

U.S. Congress takes a different approach to tweet threats. Congress continues to provide some funding to fight against wildfires although the greatest amount from state budgets. In March of this year, the federal government set up a $2 billion annual fund for wildfires. In 2017, California’s wildfire fighting budget exceeded that number and by the look of the latest wildfire outbreaks will exceed it again in 2018. California Governor, Jerry Brown, has requested that the President take time from his tweets to declare the state is facing a major disaster.