Trump plans to merge wildland firefighting efforts into one agency, but ex-officials warn of chaos
Source: AP
Updated 4:08 PM EDT, May 20, 2025
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — 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.
The Trump administration in its first months temporarily cut off money for wildfire mitigation work and sharply reduced the ranks of federal government firefighters through layoffs and retirement. That resulted in the loss of more than 1,600 qualified firefighters in the Forest Service — an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture — and hundreds of people at Interior, according to the National Association of Forest Service Retirees and Democratic lawmakers.
The personnel declines and proposed agency reshuffling come as climate change makes fires more severe by warming and drying the landscape. More than 65,000 wildfires across the U.S. burned almost 9 million acres last year.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-trump-fire-service-climate-change-85a0d6bfb15677c01a4b5fbe913eef85
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