Readers React: Here’s the ‘radical environmentalist’ plan for addressing wildfires, Secretary Ryan Zinke

To the editor: Setting aside Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s naked hypocrisy (“It’s not time for finger-pointing,” Zinke said, before immediately pointing a finger: “These radical environmentalists that want nature to take its course.… You know what? This is on them”), he is wrong on the substance as well.

Environmentalists such as those at the Wilderness Society — after years of study and scientific analysis — have recommended policies such as removing fuel in wildland-urban interface areas, allowing selective forest thinning and permitting lightning-caused fires to burn in areas where public safety is not at risk.

Along with real steps to reverse or limit climate change, this is the type of forest management that is needed — not the unfettered logging that Zinke and President Trump euphemistically call “forest management.”

Carl Siechert, Pasadena

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To the editor: Zinke and Trump are, unfortunately for the rest of us, their own experts.

When I was in graduate school, my favorite professor said to me, “Don’t fall in love with your own ideas.” I miss him.

Michael D. Mauer, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Would someone please urge our ignorant deciders Zinke and Trump to read the well-written op-ed article by Anu Partanen on the factual explanation of what, why and how the fires of California relate to matters of climate, forests and human intervention?

Hint: Partanen, who is Finnish, says it does not have anything to do with raking leaves.

Sylvia Lewis Gunning, Thousand Oaks

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