The decision undermines Trump’s repeated insistence that communities need to clear combustible materials like fallen branches and undergrowth — “it’s called management of the floor,” he said while visiting Los Angeles last month — to guard against wildfires.
Elizabeth Peace, a spokesperson for the Interior Department, said via email that mitigation work is “currently undergoing review to ensure consistency” with Trump’s executive orders.
The scrutiny is being applied only to projects using money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, two centerpieces of former President Joe Biden’s administration. They included roughly $3 billion for wildfire mitigation efforts, often known as hazardous fuels reduction programs.
The issue is that controlled burns require a large amount of manpower to make sure it STAYS controlled. You don’t simply toss a match into that part of the forest, there’s a lot of firebreak work and very careful observation that goes in to making sure a burn doesn’t turn into something bigger and harder to control.
Is it better to not let it burn or clear out fuel, in the long run?