Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke danced around questions about whether climate change is to blame for California wildfires. But he made no bones about blaming environmentalists.

Zinke said, "Federal property, by and large over the last decades, has not been managed and we have been held hostage by these environmental groups that sue after sue after sue after lawsuit and preventing us from managing our forests, and public lands belongs to everybody, and not just these special interest groups."

Fox host Neil Cavuto tried to get Zinke to speak about the role of climate change. "Do you believe climate change is real and that man is the cause?" Cavuto asked.

Zinke waffled. "It's clear in the forest fires that the temperatures are being elevated, the fire seasons extended, it’s longer, there’s no dispute about that,” Zinke said, “and there's no dispute that climate is changing, although it has always changed. Whether man is the direct result, how much that result is, that still is being disputed, but in the case of forest fires, it’s clear. Temperatures are higher, the seasons longer, the drought conditions has elevated it, but you can't ignore that the condition of the forest itself - too many dead and dying trees, too much fuel and active management is a better stewardship..."

Later, Cavuto quoted California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown: “The predictions I see are more serious predictions of warming and fires to occur later in this century 2040 or 2050,yet they're occurring now in real time.” Cavuto asked, “Is he right?"

Zinke replied, "This does not have to be the new norm. You can manage forests. You can restore the health of the forests. You have to remove the dead and dying trees." He did not answer the question.

Scientific American acknowledges that wildfires “are heavily subject to the influence of human land use” but it also notes that “scientists are increasingly suggesting that climate change has already had a hand in shaping fire seasons, not just in California but elsewhere around the world, and will likely continue to play a major role.”

Watch Trump’s Secretary of the Interior refuse to acknowledge any role of climate change in the California wildfires below, from the August 16, 2018 Your World.