The insinuation of that statistic is that federal land management should be blamed as much or more than the state of California. That may be true. It also may be true that the actual lands that have been burning and been poorly managed are more state lands than federal lands. California is obviously a large state. That's why we need to know what percent of the burnt lands are actually state versus federal before I'd deem the statistic in question to be useful.
By acres burned in California, Federal lands are still usually in the lead but not by as much; very roughly in proportion to Federal landownership, which is 57% of state forests. See overview at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildfires-forests-ins.... The hard numbers seem to come from the historical state-by-state statistics from https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_statistics.html
From the Reuters article:
> The number of acres treated by the U.S. Forest Service in California during fiscal 2020 was the second lowest under Trump's administration, and 40% below a recent peak of 424,486 acres treated in the state during the last year of the Obama administration, according to the data.
But that seems a little misleading considering the impact of COVID-19 on 2020. Here's a nice table of historical prescribed burns broken down nationally: https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_prescribed.html (also https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/intelligence/2019_st...). From that it doesn't seem Trump's administration is substantially any better or worse than Obama's. Other than that Trump's accusation seem off-base--if California is to blame, to a first approximation so too must be the Feds, and in any event states seem to perform several times more prescribed burning by acreage than the Feds--I don't think there's much else that can be said without some domain expertise. The types of lands and their locations, the appropriateness of mitigations (or lack thereof), the distribution of fires, etc, would all seem to be important to drawing any serious conclusions about what has happened and what is practicable in the future.
> By far the largest forest landowner in the state is the fed-eral government, which controls 57 percent of Californiaís forests.
Edit since I'm getting downvoted: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44267.pdf
> Although Congress has ultimate authority over federal lands under the Property Clause, states have legal authority to manage federal lands within their borders to the extent that Congress has chosen to give them such authority.
So whether California is able to manage forests on federal land within state borders to address the risk of uncontrolled fires isn't immediately clear, and presumably someone would need to dig up a relevant statute, if any, to show who is actually responsible.
Also, "could" doesn't mean that they do. From your very own link:
"States can obtain authority to own and manage federal lands within their borders only by federal, not state, law. Congress’s broad authority over federal lands includes the authority to dispose of lands, and Congress can choose to transfer ownership of federal land to states. States have legal authority to manage federal lands within their borders to the extent Congress has given them such authority. As an example, Congress has to a large extent allowed states to exercise management authority over wildlife as a traditional area of state concern. Congress could give states authority to manage certain other activities, resources, or other aspects of federal lands. Congress also could give federal agencies authority to delegate or assign responsibility for aspects of federal land management to states or other partners."
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/08/13/california-u-s-forest-serv...
* State leaders should continue to remind federal lawmakers and policymakers of federal obligations to its forests within California.
* State agencies should plan to make greater use of the Good Neighbor Authority to perform treatments on federal land.
"""
51% of forests in California are on Federal Land.