The future of fighting and preventing forest fires
Forest fires have always been a normal part of our landscape – and a tool used by human civilizations for millennia. But as climate change makes our landscapes hotter and drier, wildfires are getting bigger and more destructive. Fire consumed 8.9 million acres across the U.S. last year. The LA County fires this January are the costliest so far, with some estimates putting the total close to $250 billion in damages. How can we better adapt to living with these massive fires? And how should we think about fighting – and preventing – them?
As fire burns north of Tucson, Trump plans to merge wildland firefighting efforts into one agency. Ex-officials warn of chaos and major disruptions in the midst of fire season
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.
Trumps plan to merge wildland firefighting efforts receives pushback
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.
US plan to merge fire agencies raises staffing and strategy concerns
Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology described the plan as disruptive to existing land management practices.
Ingalsbee said: “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.”
Trump plans to merge wildland firefighting efforts into one agency, but ex-officials warn of chaos
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.
Wildfire policy leaders slam Trump’s firefighting proposal
“Creating a separate fire management agency from land management agencies will sever the connection between fire management and land management,” Ingalsbee said. “It will lose that stewardship ethos, and it will just become a kind of municipal fire department in the woods.”
Idaho Gov. Little aims to ‘complement’ Trump order with this wildfire plan
Tim Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and the co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, told the Idaho Statesman that an overreliance on commercial logging would in fact exacerbate the risk of wildfires. He supports increasing the use of prescribed burns — along with strategically cutting back smaller trees and clearing out undergrowth — as a more effective form of mitigation.
As a wildland firefighter, “I worked hard as a young man to save those trees, to keep them standing,” Ingalsbee said. “If that’s their solution, why bother to fight fires at all?”
Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding − this could be a rough year
Some of the Forest Service staff who were fired or put in limbo by the Trump administration are those who do research or collect and communicate critical data about forests and fire risk. Other fired staff provided support so crews could clear flammable debris and carry out fuel treatments such as prescribed burns, thinning forests and building fire breaks.
Losing people in these roles is like firing all primary care doctors and leaving only EMTs. Both are clearly needed. As many people know from emergency room bills, preventing emergencies is less costly than dealing with the damage later.
Trump Laid Off Nearly All the Federal Workers Who Investigate Firefighter Deaths
The federal firefighting force faces a daunting year, with spending cuts canceling prescribed burns to reduce flammable vegetation and the termination of hundreds of firefighting support staff, even in the face of climate-change-lengthened wildfire seasons.
“At a time when we need to be bolstering these efforts and personnel, it’s pretty damn appalling that we’d be trying to diminish the health benefits for our firefighters and first responders,” a Forest Service firefighter said.
The state’s controversial wildfire map may go. But the risk to communities won’t.
No matter where you live in Lane County, don’t discount your wildfire risk, said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the Eugene-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
“Once it enters the city, what begins is house to house ignition, kind of like a chain nuclear reaction,” Ingalsbee said. “So that’s why even in the center of Eugene, we’re still vulnerable.”
With much of Eugene and Springfield categorized as low hazard in the wildfire map, he worries the map has given people a “false sense of security” at a time when city resources are already stretched thin.
To save our trees, we must burn down our forests
The best way to save the oak, and the countless critters that rely on it, is to return fire to our landscape. This might seem counterintuitive when wildfires, particularly in the West, spin more out of control each season. But for the sake of nature, we need more fire rather than less. Actually, if the goal is to reduce the danger of wildfires, we also need more fire rather than less.
Draft Trump order could endanger firefighters by changing needed aircraft requirements, Washington state officials warn
“This EO has the potential to shift responsibility for fires to private entities more interested in their corporate bottom line than the lives of the people wildfire impacts…” Rodruck said. “…The last thing we should do is make wildland fire fighting less safe, but that’s exactly what this order, as it is written currently, will do.”
Trump considering plan to change how the country fights wildfires
Some firefighters say the attempt to put out all wildfires is both unrealistic and counterproductive. Fire is a natural part of the landscape, they say, and allowing lower-intensity burns in certain areas clears vegetation and prevents more catastrophic fires that rage through years of built-up fuel.
“Fire exclusion is the problem,” said Joe Stutler, who has 57 years of firefighting experience and serves as a commander for federal incident management teams. “We need more fire. We don’t need less fire on the landscape.”
Stutler also said it is unrealistic to think that firefighters could respond within 30 minutes to wildfires that often break out in remote wilderness areas. Such an expectation could lead to firefighters taking more dangerous risks, he said.
White House pushed to move firefighting out of Forest Service
A draft executive order would revamp wildland firefighting, pursuing a new federal agency and mandating 30-minute response times in high-risk areas.
Logging doesn’t prevent wildfires, but Trump is trying it anyway
The Agriculture Department is opening more than 112 million acres of federal forests to logging in a misguided bid to prevent fires and boost timber production.
Trump said cuts wouldn’t affect public safety. Then he fired hundreds of workers who help fight wildfires.
The White House and DOGE have sought to eliminate thousands of jobs from the Forest Service. The wildland firefighting force is one of many targets within the agency.
Why California and the West could face a ‘big fire season’ later this year
Hot and dry conditions in the region could accelerate yet another wildfire season, with high risks of concerning conflagrations even for areas that had rain and snow this winter.
Here’s where Americans are increasingly at risk for wildfires
Storm debris, population growth and dry conditions are all contributing to a vicious fire season in the South.
The REAL Story of the LA Fires | Full Documentary
It is WILD how often cities used to burn down. So when fires ripped through LA at the beginning of 2025, we wondered: are urban firestorms BACK? In 1871, nearly a third of Chicago burned down. In 1889, 25 blocks of Seattle went up in flames. Modern buildings and firefighting solved the problem. So, how is this happening again? And why is it getting worse? To find out, we went to LA while the fires were still burning. Our crew was on the ground from day one. We interviewed top fire officials and leading scientists. And, we learned exactly what went wrong in LA - and the ONE THING that could stop these UNSTOPPABLE fires.
Fire satellite launches into orbit to help early detection of wildfires
The new technology is not only about suppression, but mitigation, says Kate Dargan Marquis.