Brown admits Trump was right about wildfires, proposes changes to logging rules

The mainstream media are blaming the wildfires raging through California on global warming. President Donald Trump is blaming it on government mismanagement of U.S. forests. Who’s correct?

Surprisingly, Trump is right on this one.

And Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) conceded as much as he urged lawmakers to loose restrictions and regulations on logging practices.

According to The Santa Cruz Sentinel, the government is recommending significant changes to logging rules in The Golden State for the first time in 50 years.

The newspaper reported:

“Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing broad new changes to California’s logging rules that would allow landowners to cut larger trees and build temporary roads without obtaining a permit as a way to thin more forests across the state.”

What would change? Under his proposal, private landowners would be permitted to cut trees up to 36 inches in diameter and they would be allowed to construct roads of up to 600 feet long without a permit.

This might not be the primary resolution to reduce wildfires, but it’s a start.

Liberty Nation reported:

In forests, dead trees amass, and when saplings are crushed together, they consume water and cause old-growth trees to perish and experience an infestation of bugs. This ties in to the next fact: Today, Washington owns about half the ground in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Oregon. As a result, logging has plunged approximately 75% in these regions.

The simple solution is not further conservation, but private logging companies to thin the forests. Think about how much damage could be prevented if businesses started thinning these areas. But leaders do not want that to happen because they want to preserve forests in their natural state.

Also, as eminent libertarian author, Lew Rockwell, noted, “They are socialist puritans consumed with fear that someone, somewhere, might be making a profit.”

If you don’t believe it’ll work, then look to the Sunshine State or the Peach State, where the feds own 8% and 4%, respectively, of the land. Private forests that offer a large portion of the country’s lumber are maintained by entrepreneurial tree-huggers who realize uncultivated and neglected trees are dangerous. Florida had a third of the wildfires that California had in 2017.

Chalk this up for another win for Trump.