Removing dead trees and thinning forests are common tools for helping to prevent wildfires. But scientists have shown climate change is driving up temperatures and triggering longer wildfire seasons in western states. Last year, researchers from Columbia University and the University of Idaho found that climate change has been fueling wildfires in the western United States for decades.

As HuffPost previously reported, President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget calls for a $300 million reduction to the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire fighting programs, another $50 million in cuts to its wildfire prevention efforts and a 23 percent reduction in funding for volunteer fire departments.

Montana climatologist Kelsey Jencso told Montana Public Radio last week that a long period of observation is needed to tell if Montana’s current wildfire season is the result of climate change, but that the smoke currently blanketing the state “is certainly what the future [of climate change] may look like.”

Asked Thursday if climate change has anything to do with the intensity of fires in recent years, Perdue said there have also been major fires in the eastern part of the country at certain periods of time.

“There obviously is climate change, temperature change, weather change. And we have to deal, we have to adapt to it. And we have to manage the forest,” he said.

Perdue added that steps should be taken to minimize the threat regardless of the cause. “We can’t affect what the weather is or anything else, but we can affect how we manage these forests to reduce the impact of forest fires.”

In an apparent attempt to dismiss the role of climate change, Daines pointed to the Great Fire of 1910, which “burned three million acres [in Montana and Idaho] and killed enough timber to fill a freight train 2,400 miles long,” according to the Department of Agriculture.

“The climate has always been changing, we go through warmer cycles, cooler cycles, droughts, excessive precipitation,” Daines said. “We are in a warm cycle right now, we are in drought conditions here in Montana. And consequently, we’re having a severe fire season.”

Trump and several members of his Cabinet have dismissed the threat of climate change and the role humans are playing in driving up global temperatures. And the administration has worked expeditiously to derail America’s actions to combat climate change and roll back environmental regulations.

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have denied the role carbon dioxide emissions are playing in driving climate change. Zinke has said glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park started melting “right after the end of the Ice Age” and that it has “been a consistent melt.” He also dismissed the notion that government scientists can predict with certainty how much warming will occur by 2100 under a business-as-usual scenario.

Listen to the full press briefing here, recorded by Newstalk KGVO.