Interior and Agriculture heads lay out plan for more efficient wildfire collaboration

“It offers a hope for some fundamental change in federal fire management, particularly within the U.S. Forest Service,” Tim Ingalsbee, head of the advocacy group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, said of the memos.

But a big part of the change he’d like to see is a reorientation toward putting more beneficial fire on the ground.

“We have to increase and facilitate the use of beneficial fire on the landscape,” he said, referring to practices like prescribed fire. “And there's nothing even hinting of that necessary change in either.”

Instead, he worries that the plans could lead to “further downsizing the wildland fire workforce and shrinking the budget for federal fire management.”