Republicans love the environment. Why? Because we go out and play in it.

Republicans are for things like responsible forest management, which allows for thinning and firewising to prevent massive forest fires. liberals are for things like not touching forests, allowing fuel to pile up and feed even more intensive fires whenever lightning strikes.

Dope, thinning and firewising was developed by Europeans. Europe badly cut down there forests in the 17-1800s and at that time, Euros thought leaving them alone to get full forest canopies was the best. It took a hundred years for the benefits of light forest thinning to gain full acceptance. The benefits of thinning on growth are data proven, and it was a reverence of nature vs what the data said that had to be gotten over in Europe.

The USA had the opposite problem. Our forests had been thinned and some of the underbrush cleared by the Indians when we got here. Disease wiped out 80-90% of the Indians and the forest regrew and rapidly enough that it's hypothesized this growth caused the Little Ice Age in Britain. The USA had tons of lumber.

We adopted much of the Europe view and then developed our own. We do thin and firewise forests, but we have a lot of forests and I suspect can't do everything. Couple that with drier forests and we have a problem.