New burn bans and Trump's battle with immigration and DEI are impacting forest fires

Firefighters also indicated that a full suppression strategy was not supported by science or indigenous knowledge of how to protect land. A 2025 study found that during the 2020 fire season in California, areas that had been burned before experienced wildfires that were about 16% less severe, on average.

"It's in defiance of all that we have learned, decades of fire ecology research, all that indigenous people have shared with us about how they stewarded the land with fire," said Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee, a wildland fire ecologist and former Forest Service firefighter. "And so it's just very alarming."