"A panel of experts said Wednesday that California’s devastating wildfires were caused primarily by “the way we manage lands and develop our landscape” rather than climate change.
Stephens noted that in past centuries, wildfires were far more widespread than they are today, and played a vital role in California’s ecosystem by helping to thin forests, Thomas Frank reported for E&E News.
In the 18th century, for instance, when California was occupied by indigenous communities, wildfires would burn up some 4.5 million acres a year, said Stephens, whereas from 2013 through 2019, wildfires burned an average of just 935,000 acres annually in California.
Even in 2018, the worst year for California fires, blazes consumed just 2 million acres.
“When you think about what fire used to do in the state, it was so integral to systems. Fire was almost as important as rain to ecosystems,” Stephens said.
Jennifer Montgomery, director of the California Forest Management Task Force, said that climate change did not cause wildfires but “accelerated” them by creating hotter and drier conditions that aggravated naturally occurring blazes.
“Climate change is an amplifier for natural systems and natural occurrences,” Montgomery said.
The comments by Montgomery and Stephens flew in the face of recent assertions by the head of California’s largest power utility who has blamed the wildfires on climate change."
Read more - [
link to www.breitbart.com (secure)]
United States
