The media are busy laughing it up over President Trump’s supposed gaffe,
Trump Suggests California Wildfires Can Be Avoided by ‘Raking’
“We’ve gotta take care of the floors, you know, the floors of the forest. It’s very important,” he said. “You look at other countries where they do it differently and it’s a whole different story. I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation. And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem. And when it is, it’s a very small problem.”
“I was watching the firemen the other day, and they were raking areas. They were raking areas where the fire was right over there,” he said gesturing to a corner of the room. “They’re raking trees, little trees like this that are nut trees, little bushes, that you could see are totally dry. Weeds. And they’re raking them, they’re on fire. That should have been all raked out.”
Even some Finnish media who should know better, are joining in on the fun, even publishing their article in English.
Finland mentioned! According to Trump doesn’t have destructive forest fires because of good forestry practices: “They use raking a lot”
Being a resident of Finland for over the past 30 years and having relatives who actually own forests, I know what Trump was referring to, pro-active management forestry. What this means is, the yearly thinning and clearing out of waste wood (roskapuita). The forest floor is cleaned of unwanted brush, stumps, and trees to allow both light and room for new tree-growth. The side effects are a more healthy, fire-resistant forest…
Most Finnish forest owners have a many year program/strategy mapped out, either by themselves or by a company that’s paid to do the work. Clearing out young trees growth nestled too close together is crucial for actual tree growth and forest renewal. The unwanted cut is removed (Trump: ‘raked’) and taken to bio-plants for recycling into reusable energy.
The ‘clearing’ or even ‘thinning out’ of forests would have been the more preferable of words to use, but in essence, Trump was right, land management is crucial in the retarding of wildfire and better forest harvesting.
NOTE: Interesting that the media (even in Finland) never raked Obama over the coals for any of his major gaffes:
