The U.S. Wildland Fire Service has officially launched; but Congress has decided not to fund it
Hicks’ organization is concerned that the USWFS will focus too heavily on wildfire suppression, as opposed to mitigation policies like prescribed fire. Many researchers and officials say that there is an extraordinary deficit of low- and moderate-intensity fires on Western landscapes. More than a century of aggressive fire suppression has allowed for the buildup of fuels, which the Forest Service itself has acknowledged as a contributor “to what is now a full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”
“This is going in the opposite direction of getting fire back on the landscape,” Hicks said of the new agency. “And really divorces suppressing fires from natural resource management.”
Interior’s new Fire Service could siphon off thousands of BLM staff
"There are definitely concerns on this change because fire crews are used to help with work in the field like clearing trails or repairing fences when there is down time and no one is sure if that practice will be able to continue."
The ambitious consolidation of fire employees could set up friction with some members of Congress, who recently denied an effort by the Trump administration to create a wildfire agency at Interior to take over fire management from the U.S. Forest Service, which is under the Agriculture Department. Congress instead ordered the Interior Department to study the concept.
Interior launches consolidated U.S. Wildland Fire Service
It appears the new agency is suppression-focused, Steve Ellis, a western Oregon resident who chairs the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, told Capital Press.
“While consolidating agencies might appear to be more efficient for fixing the catastrophic wildfire problem, successful wildland fire management involves much more than suppression,” he said. “The critical linkage between fire suppression and land management, including fuels reduction and prescribed fire, must be maintained.”
Trump administration stands up consolidated federal firefighting agency over bipartisan congressional reservations
The Trump administration has taken the first steps in standing up its new, consolidated federal firefighting agency, despite Congress declining to fund it and voicing bipartisan reservations about the plan.
‘Wildland Fire Service’ stalled pending further study
The U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled plans for the formation of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service in September, with the goal of having the Service operational by the end of January. The formation of the new Service followed an executive order issued by President Donald Trump demanding the Service’s establishment.
Those efforts may never come to fruition after both Democratic and Republican lawmakers blocked that order and opted to maintain the current wildland firefighting structure in their new funding bills. The bill package continues funding allocations for wildland firefighting services to the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior.
Safeguarding fire-prone homes is a collective action problem
“It’s a community issue,” Ms. Berry, the Tahoe Fund chief executive, said. “If one house on the block doesn’t clean up their act, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the community does.”
Which city burns next?
Watching from afar, we still reflexively call these disasters “wildfires,” perhaps imagining that they ignite in some distant forest. But there may be little truly “wild” about such fires beyond the ferocity of the burn. Increasingly, disaster strikes almost entirely within an urban envelope, drawing on homes and landscaping for fuel rather than trees and wild brush. These are not forest fires encroaching on human settlement but rather human settlements burning like only forests used to. And stopping them will require something much harder, and more unpopular, than clearing out distant forests of dead wood.
Wildland firefighters open to respirator use, UCLA study finds
Wildland firefighters are willing to wear respirators and other protective breathing equipment despite concerns the devices could hinder their ability to fight fires safely, according to new research from UCLA.
As evidence of Idaho homeowners insurance crisis mounts, so does bipartisan concern
In a 2024 paper, she and her coauthors argued that it is rapid fire growth that matters most when it comes to risks to homes and neighborhoods.
“The modern era of megafires is often defined based on wildfire size, but it should be defined based on how fast fires grow and their consequent societal impacts,” the October 2024 Science publication opens. “Speed fundamentally dictates the deadly and destructive impact of megafires, rendering the prevailing paradigm that defines them by size inadequate.”
‘It’s Just Us’: The Firefighter, His Son and a Treacherous Choice
Over time, he noticed how inconsistent the directives were. One day, his crew might be told to clean up everything 10 feet into a burned area; another day, 100. Sometimes the supervisors sent them back to the same patch again and again, stirring up more ash. “It was like, ‘We’ve been here five times — there’s nothing left,’” he said.
He figured these were at least safer assignments, farther from flames. In fact, mop-up is among the most carcinogenic work on a fire.
U.S. Will Pay $450,000 to Wildfire Fighters With Cancer
“The reality is that they are being exposed to stuff that puts them at greater risk to save us,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who sponsored the bill alongside Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota.
The legislation, which passed as part of a larger military spending bill, requires that some 20 smoke-related cancers be automatically treated as line-of-duty injuries or deaths. The aid includes a one-time tax-free payment of $448,575 and four years of financial support for the firefighter’s children or spouse to pursue higher education. Families who have lost loved ones within the last six years will be eligible to file for benefits retroactively.
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“The community building I’ve seen and experienced because of FUSEE will send waves of positive change that will affect generations of public land managers. In attending these mindfulness retreats I’ve seen how profoundly it can touch someone, and give them tools to heal invisible scars many wildland firefighters carry.”
Hope—and Many Fears—Follow in the Wake of Trump’s Plan to Transform Wildland Firefighting
“The wildland fire community is freaked out beyond alarm … by all the defunding and downsizing and disruption caused by the DOGE dudes,” said Tim Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter who is now executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE). Over his career, he has worked in fire operations under both the USDA and the Interior Department.
One of FUSEE’s primary concerns about consolidation is the mission impact. Each agency under the Interior Department brings different approaches to wildfire—for good reasons. The National Park Service, for example, seeks to protect communities by maintaining ecological health, while the BLM’s top priority is securing public safety; its website lists fire suppression first among the ways it does so.
“If you’re going to consolidate all these different programs with their different missions … whose fire philosophy is going to prevail?” Ingalsbee asked. His worry is that suppression will win out.
Fix Our Forests in name only. A new piece of bipartisan legislation would erode safeguards meant to protect trees
Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and now wildland fire ecologist, is executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. He also emphasizes the harms of road building—often falsely characterized as necessary for effective wildland firefighting—agreeing that FOFA on the whole is a dangerous bill.
He does think that, in isolation, some of FOFA’s provisions around wildland firefighting are important, but he worries about the impacts of the law’s overall approach on firefighter morale. “There is a legitimate need for proactive fire fuels management,” Ingalsbee said, pointing to prescribed burning, Indigenous cultural burning, and community fire preparation. Fire is inevitable and necessary in fire-prone landscapes, he said, and the century-plus-long practice of total fire suppression needs to change. “The exclusion of fire is now coming back to haunt us.”
Building more roads in national forests won’t prevent wildfires
Revoking the Roadless Rule will do no favors for wildland firefighters, only increase their risks and burdens to keep bolstering the failing and ultimately futile fire exclusion policies of the past century.
Firefighters motivated by conservation values and dedicated to protecting America’s wildlands are not willing to trade away ecological integrity for dubious claims of improved firefighter efficiency—not in our name, you don’t!
OPINION: Building more roads in national forests won’t prevent wildfires
Building roads is one of the most devastating things you can do to backcountry native forests. Carved into steep mountain slopes, gravel roads are perpetual sources of sediment that pollute waterways, foul fish habitat, spread invasive weeds and invite unnatural wildfires.
Despite these risks, the Trump administration wants to revoke the Roadless Area Conservation Rule and bulldoze new roads into national forests, claiming that they are necessary for “wildfire prevention” and “fuels reduction” to improve firefighter efficiency.
This is a pants-on-fire false alarm that ignores scientific evidence and denies the last quarter-century of lived experience.
Building roads leads to the destruction of native forests. Roads are lifeless, linear clear-cuts that open doors for commercial logging that converts tree groves into slash-covered stump fields and tree farms, while logging roads become lined with thickets of shrubs and invasive weeds.
This kind of phony “fuels reduction” makes roads and logging sites much more flammable than the original native forest cover. Indeed, tree farms are like firebombs, and logging roads are their fuses. But the Trump administration wants the public to believe that road building and logging will help prevent wildfires because they seemingly aid firefighting.
Sabotage of public lands continues
By now it’s clear the Trump administration is far outside public opinion in its views of Western public lands.
Yet Trump’s staff continue to dismantle our system of federal lands in direct conflict with the wishes of most Americas according to numerous polls.
US firefighter detained on the job speaks out after deportation: ‘I feel betrayed’
Border patrol arrested José Bertin Cruz-Estrada while he was battling a wildfire in Washington. He is now in Mexico, separated from his family in Oregon
Forest Service restarts effort to change decades-old Pacific Northwest forest policy
Initial efforts to amend the Northwest Forest Plan focused on getting input from tribes on how the federal government should manage their ancestral lands. Forest Service officials created an advisory committee made up of multiple tribal representatives, as well as people representing environmental and timber interests, to guide its policies. They also held forums with tribes to gather input ahead of drafting proposed changes.
“It was a tribal-centric effort,” said Ryan Reed, a former advisory committee representative and a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California. “That was the headliner of our work. It’s disheartening that they felt that wasn’t enough.”
Bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act would bring big changes to national wildfire policy
Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE) said that part of the bill “expands categorical exclusions and emergency authorities that weaken analysis, public engagement, and environmental safeguards” and “encourages logging-centric approaches that are not ecologically sound or fire-resilient.”
FUSEE supports other parts of FOFA, like those aiming to facilitate prescribed fire and make communities more resilient to blazes. The group encourages Congress to improve the bill through amendments, but does not endorse it in “its current form.”
“The Act, as drafted, prioritizes expedited logging over ecological fire management and lacks funding for the reforms wildland firefighters need,” the group wrote in a recent message to legislators.