California fires partly due to environmentalists, says U.S. Interior chief

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said the deadly wildfires that scorched areas in California and killed 81 people in the northern part of the stateas of Tuesday were partly due to lawsuits from environmentalists whohave sought to stop forest management practices, such as forestthinning.

"Radical environmental groups that would rather burn downthe entire forest than cut a single tree or thin the forest,"have brought lawsuits to stop forest management, Zinke toldreporters in a teleconference about the California fires,the deadliest in the state's history. "Yes, I do lay it on thefeet" of environmentalists, he said.

Zinke did not name the groups, saying he did not want tofinger point. He said other variables, such as hottertemperatures, historic drought conditions, and plenty of deadand dying trees were also to blame.

Zinke first said environmentalists were partially to blameon Breitbart News on Sunday after visiting the Californiawildfire zone.

Zinke said Germany was a model of forest management. A few days earlier, President Donald Trump hadsingled out another European country, Finland, as a leader in forest fire monitoring and prevention.

Trump, while visiting California Saturday, saidFinland's President Sauli Niinisto recently told him the countryrarely has wildfires because "they spend a lot of time rakingand cleaning and doing things" to clear the forest floor. Niinistohas since said raking did not come up in his conversationwith Trump.

The statement prompted mockery on social media from Finns and spawned the hashtag #RakeAmericaGreatAgain, which trended on Twitter.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said forestmanagement practices need to be sped up and he hoped that U.S.agencies could get more authority under legislation.

But he said years of neglect mean it could take years forauthorities to catch up on forest management, such as thinningout the fuel of dead trees and dry underbrush, and improvingemergency roads.