The Guardian treats us to a jeremiad about how political appointees in the Trump Administration are damaging the environment by being political:

“There’s too much dead and dying timber in the forest, which fuels these catastrophic fires,” Zinke said. “Proper management of our forests, to include small prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and other techniques, will improve forest health and reduce the risk of wildfires, while also helping curb the carbon emissions.”

The thing about that is that it’s true. As with the Australian fires. Both environments have developed and evolved in the presence of frequent fires. The attempts to entirely curtail fires over the past few decades have thus built up the fuel and made the fires, when they do happen, worse.

The point being that frequent fires are low level fires, burning underbrush. If they are very occasional, with a significant fuel load, then they burn the canopy too. No one seriously doubts this basic point.

Well, except all those who want to blame the fires on climate change of course. That being politics just as much as anything the Administration is being charged with.