In June, the Trump administration called for a consolidation of federal wildfire agencies “to achieve the most efficient and effective use of wildland fire offices.” Now federal leaders have released plans about how to carry out the order.
In a memo this week, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said her agency and the Department of Interior are together undertaking a “bold transformation of the federal wildfire system to help our communities, neighbors, and partners better prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires.”
“This Memorandum directs reforms to improve performance, eliminate redundancies by consolidating key administrative functions, and streamline the overall function of the interagency wildfire response system,” it continued.
Perhaps the most sweeping change would come at Interior, where Rollins’ counterpart Doug Burgum proposed bringing the four department agencies with fire responsibilities – the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – under a single agency: the U.S. Wildland Fire Service (USWFS).
Those four agencies have until the end of October to finalize a plan for “consolidating line authority and management of the entirety of the wildland fire program,” according to Burgum’s memo.
“For too long, outdated and fragmented systems have slowed our ability to fight fires and protect lives,” the Interior secretary said in a press release. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are cutting through the bureaucracy and building a unified, modern wildfire response system that works as fast and as fearlessly as the men and women on the front lines.”
The DOI consolidation would not include the USDA’s Forest Service, but both cabinet secretaries say they’ll work toward improved interagency collaboration.
Among the measures proposed “to strengthen interagency wildfire coordination and response” between the USDA and DOI are establishing joint procurement, contracting and hiring systems. Deadlines of 30 to 270 days are set to take action on many of the proposed changes.
“I do think it's fair to say that this is a pretty heavy lift for the agencies to accomplish,” said Tyson Bertone-Riggs, a managing director of the Alliance for Wildfire Resilience, a research and advocacy group. “Some of these timelines are pretty aggressive, even if it's just the initiation of a process. But I think this clearly is a priority for the administration, and if the agencies prioritize the time to set these new policies, it seems doable.”
His organization noted that many of the proposals line up with recommendations from the congressionally created Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, which released a major report on reforming wildfire policy in 2023. Bertone-Riggs was also pleased to see calls for input from outsiders in the secretarial memos.
“That's something that we had called for in this process, “ he said. “It's critical if we're going to be rebuilding the federal system.”
But the plans also raised concerns among some wildfire policy advocates.
“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.”
Both Bertone-Riggs and Ingalsbee were pleased to see agency commitments “to modernize standards for Personal Protective Equipment to ensure the long-term health and safety of wildland firefighters.”
Concerns about wildland firefighter health have further escalated in the wake of reporting by the New York Times on the toxic exposures faced by fireline workers without respiratory protection of any kind. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz recently told a U.S. House oversight hearing that “there's always more work to do” to address that issue.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
