EDITORIAL: Echoing Trump, Biden administration calls for more controlled burns

The Biden administration’s strategy to combat wildfires reads like it was written by former President Donald Trump.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report on “climate-smart agriculture and forestry.” The study was in response to an executive order President Joe Biden issued shortly after taking office.

One section offered ideas for limiting wildfires. The first recommendation is to “increase the rate of fuels reduction to decrease the risk of severe wildfire.” In laymen’s terms, thin out the forests and remove the dead timber and brush that has turned many forests into highly combustible tinderboxes. The USDA even recommends using more controlled burns.

Officials envision a widespread change. In fiscal 2020, the agency treated 2.65 million acres. The report says the agency should double to quadruple that annually “to significantly reduce the risk of high-intensity wildfire.”

That sounds a lot like what Mr. Trump called for during his administration. When California experienced massive wildfires, he repeatedly called for better forest management. “When you have years of leaves, dried leaves on the ground, it just sets it up,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s really a fuel for a fire. So they have to do something about it.”

That’s just common sense. The buildup of dead trees and other plants creates a tinderbox of fuel. Tools such as controlled burns reduce these stockpiles of fuel, which help prevent massive blazes. But — like much of what Mr. Trump said (see school openings, Wuhan lab theory) — those in some quarters reflexively refused to acknowledge reality out of antipathy for the messenger.

“There is ample evidence that California regulatory authorities and liability-insurance rules have undermined active forest management, including prescribed burns and tree thinning, to such a degree that it’s nearly impossible to have a ‘normal’ fire season in the state,” Andrew Wheeler, EPA administrator under Mr. Trump, wrote last October.

Mr. Trump was widely attacked for pointing this out. An AP report in September 2020 called it “unfounded” for him to blame historic fires on a failure to clear forest floors and dead timber. Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Mr. Trump’s attack on California’s forest management by referencing climate change. The Washington Post said Mr. Trump made “several erroneous claims” when he said California needed to more proactively manage its forests.

The proposal by Mr. Biden’s administration generated significantly less outrage. The New York Times blandly acknowledged that the USDA’s call to thin out forests “would make fires less severe.”

You don’t say.

The science didn’t change, but the politics did. Mr. Trump won’t get the credit, but he was right about removing fuel from forests. Mr. Biden is wise to follow his lead.