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That wildfires released more CO2 than was saved by 20 years of climate change policy may be true, says Michael Wara, senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment. But Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton’s assertion was overly simplistic, Wara adds.

“The reason the forests had so much carbon to release (and did so) was precisely because they have not been managed well,” wrote Wara in an email to ChicoSol. “So managing the forests better means that they will release carbon they have been unnaturally storing since the 1840s (when we removed Native Americans from their ancestral territories).

“This just shows … that how much carbon is stored in forests really should not be considered in the same sentence as climate change policy.”