2016 – New York Times Complained California Wasn’t Allowing Forest Fires

In 2016, the New York Times said California’s failure to allow forest fires were destroying forest health

Will California Ever Let Sierra Nevada Forests Burn? – The New York Times

In 2018, the New York Times said California was at risk from huge fires, because of forest mismanagement.

“California Today: 100 Million Dead Trees Prompt Fears of Giant Wildfires”

Mark A. Finney, an expert in fire behavior for the U.S. Forest Service and an author of the study, says California forests are much more vulnerable now because, paradoxically, they have been better protected. In their natural state, forests were regularly thinned by fire but the billions of dollars that the state spends aggressively fighting wildfires and restrictions on logging have allowed forests to accumulate an overload of vegetation.

How might the dead-tree forests affect California? One of the most striking concerns is the damage the fires might do to watersheds. Intense, hot-burning fires could disrupt forests’ ability to channel water into the Sierra reservoirs that provide cities like San Francisco with drinking water. That’s a scenario that could nudge the state into rethinking its forest management.

California Today: 100 Million Dead Trees Prompt Fears of Giant Wildfires – The New York Times

President Trump agreed with them.

Apparently it is against New York Times rules to agree with President Trump – so the science changed.

Trump’s Misleading Claims About California’s Fire ‘Mismanagement’ – The New York Times

Decades of bad forest management is now called “climate change.”

“US representatives tour Yosemite National Park, discuss plans to fight climate change”

“Our forests are now catastrophically overgrown. The Sierra are carrying four times the timber density that the land can support. Those beautiful forests are now falling victim to disease, pestilence, drought, and ultimately, catastrophic wildfire,” McClintock said. “We have legislation that was just introduced to provide for more active forest thinning to protect groves like the Sequoia, but we need to extend that throughout the forest system.”