Trump plans to merge wildland firefighting efforts into one agency, but
ex-officials warn of chaos
[May 21, 2025]
By MATTHEW BROWN
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration is trying
to merge the government’s wildland firefighting efforts into a single
agency, a move some former federal officials warn could increase the
risk of catastrophic blazes and ultimately cost billions of dollars.
Trump's budget would centralize firefighting efforts now split among
five agencies and two Cabinet departments into a single Federal Wildland
Fire Service under the U.S. Interior Department.
That would mean shifting thousands of personnel from the U.S. Forest
Service — where most federal firefighters now work — into the new agency
with fire season already underway. Budget documents do not disclose how
much the change could cost or save.
The Trump administration in its first months temporarily cut off money
for wildfire mitigation work and sharply reduced the ranks of federal
government firefighters through layoffs and retirement. That resulted in
the loss of more than 1,600 qualified firefighters in the Forest Service
— an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture — and hundreds of people
at Interior, according to the National Association of Forest Service
Retirees and Democratic lawmakers.
The personnel declines and proposed agency reshuffling come as climate
change makes fires more severe by warming and drying the landscape. More
than 65,000 wildfires across the U.S. burned almost 9 million acres last
year.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Tuesday during testimony before the
House Appropriations Committee that the new fire service would
streamline work to stamp out blazes.
“We want more firefighters on the front lines and less people trying to
make manual decisions on how to allocate resources and personnel,"
Burgum said. “We’ve got duplicative and ineffective structures that
could be improved."
But organizations representing firefighters and former Forest Service
officials say it would be costly to restructure firefighting efforts and
cause major disruptions in the midst of fire season. Over the long term,
they said, it would shift the focus from preventing fires through forest
thinning and controlled burns, to extinguishing them even in cases where
fire could have beneficial effects.
“You will not suppress your way to success in dealing with catastrophic
fires. It’s going to create greater risk and it’s going to be
particularly chaotic if you implement it going into fire season," said
Steve Ellis, the chairman of the forest service retirees group and a
former wildfire incident commander.
The group, which includes several former Forest Service chiefs, said in
a letter to lawmakers that consolidation of firefighting work could
“actually increase the likelihood of more large catastrophic fires,
putting more communities, firefighters and resources at risk.”
Cleaving the Forest Service’s firefighting duties from its role as a
land manager would be “like separating cojoined twins — it would
basically kill the agency” said Timothy Ingalsbee with Firefighters
United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, a Eugene, Oregon-based advocacy
group.
Another destructive fire season is expected this year, driven by above
normal temperatures for most of the country, according to federal
officials.
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A firefighter carries a drip torch as he ignites a backfire against
the Hughes Fire burning along a hillside in Castaic, Calif., Jan.
22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
More than 1 million acres have burned in 2025, including in Arizona,
Minnesota, California, Colorado, Nebraska, New Jersey and other
states.
The Trump administration proposal has some bipartisan support, with
California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla and Montana Republican Sen.
Tim Sheehy sponsoring legislation that's similar. Before his
election last year, Sheehy founded an aerial firefighting company
that relies heavily on federal contracts.
A prior proposal to merge the Forest Service and Interior to improve
firefighting was found to have significant drawbacks by the
Congressional Research Service in a 2008 report.
“A wildfire agency would likely focus on fire control, largely
because acres burned are the most readily measurable performance
standard," the report said. “Wildfire management activities that
seek to reduce damages, such as protecting individual structures and
reducing biomass fuels, are less likely to be emphasized.”
Burgum indicated the administration was not waiting for the bill to
pass and he would work with Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins to begin
coordinating operations for the current fire season.
The Forest Service workforce was initially cut in February during
billionaire Elon Musk’s push to reduce federal spending, and at
least 1,000 National Park Service workers also were let go. A court
order to rehire fired workers along with a public outcry brought
many workers back to their jobs but Democratic lawmakers have said
it’s not enough.
The Forest Service had about 9,450 wildland firefighters as of May
3, with a goal of 11,300 by mid-July.
Interior employs about 6,700 wildland firefighters, spread between
the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of
Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management.
State officials in Washington and Oregon said this month that a loss
of federal workers who help support wildland firefighting is making
planning for the upcoming wildfire season a challenge. The
administration has not released the exact number of fired and
rehired workers.
In a separate action aimed at wildfires, the Trump administration
last month rolled back environmental safeguards around future
logging projects on more than half of U.S. national forests.
The emergency designation covers 176,000 square miles (455,000
square kilometers) of terrain primarily in the West but also in the
South, around the Great Lakes and in New England.
Most of those forests are considered to have high wildfire risk, and
many are in decline because of insects and disease.
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