"Ryan Zinke knew exactly whom to blame for the catastrophic wildfires that have scorched California and the West this year.

Touring the scarred neighborhoods of Redding in August, President Donald Trump’s interior secretary blasted “special interest” environmental groups for blocking logging projects that he said would have made forests safer.

His words recalled the timber wars of the 1990s, when conservative politicians and out-of-work loggers blamed environmentalists for court rulings and a thicket of regulations that silenced chainsaws in many Western forests to protect the spotted owl and other threatened wildlife."

Dale Kasler and Ryan Sabalow report for the Sacramento Bee October 4, 2018. [2]