"Scientists say the Trump administration’s proposed program to cut down trees to gain an upper hand over wildfire and protect the sage-grouse bird may in fact do the opposite: increase the wildfire threat and risk ecosystem “collapse.”

At the same time, the administration says the program is no match against extreme wildfires driven by climate change.

The proposed plan, which the Bureau of Land Management published last week, aims to reshape the ecology of sagebrush ecosystems across 38.5 million acres of federal land in six states to reduce the severity of wildfires and help restore sagebrush.

It comes as climate change is contributing to larger, more volatile wildfires across the region. Those include the Martin Fire which scorched a 57-mile-wide swath across 435,569 acres of sagebrush and grasses in Nevada in July 2018—the largest in the state’s history."

Bobby Magill reports for Bloomberg Environment April 9, 2020. [2]