{"id":275980,"date":"2026-02-05T19:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/275980\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T19:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:54:08","slug":"trumps-new-wildland-fire-service-is-failing-to-ignite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/275980\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s new Wildland Fire Service is failing to ignite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wildfires have consumed thousands of buildings, killed dozens of people, and smothered millions in choking smoke in recent years. Blazes like the Los Angeles wildfires in 2025<\/a> have also revealed that fighting these massive blazes continues to be hampered by bureaucratic traps<\/a> \u2014 which agency is in charge of the response, who is on the hook for the cleanup, what layer of government is accountable for prevention, and who has to pay for it all?<\/p>\n

\u201cIn too many cases, including in California, a slow and inadequate response to wildfires is a direct result of reckless mismanagement and lack of preparedness,\u201d President Donald Trump said last year in an executive order<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That confusion is one reason why the Department of the Interior announced last month that it is taking steps to create a new Wildland Fire Service<\/a>. The idea is to streamline disparate firefighting efforts across 693 million acres of federal land into one agency.<\/p>\n

The Department of the Interior is creating the Wildland Fire Service to streamline its firefighting efforts. Wildfire management is currently split among multiple agencies, adding cost, delays, and frustration to fire response efforts. However, Congress did not approve the proposal to merge firefighting efforts across the Interior Department and the US Department of Agriculture, home to the US Forest Service. The Interior Department is focusing on internal reorganization for now.Experts say removing bureaucracy in firefighting is a good idea but express concern that focusing on fire suppression could lead to neglect of broader fire risk mitigation as the nature of wildfires evolves.Managing wildfires effectively requires going beyond putting out blazes, including tactics like forest management and updated building codes. This is often outside of federal jurisdiction and requires coordination with local authorities. <\/p>\n

The idea has promise, and the move to bring in Brian Fennessy, a veteran Southern California fire chief, to helm the agency was applauded by many in the firefighting community<\/a>. But the agency is already off to a shaky start. The Interior Department requested a budget of $6.55 billion<\/a> for the new Wildland Fire Service initiative, but Congress pointedly did not include funding for it<\/a> in the recent spending package in January because it would have required changes across multiple federal departments. Lawmakers did say they are open to studying the idea.<\/p>\n

The debate over the funding aside, few doubt that there is a real problem here: Dealing with wildfires is a convoluted and costly endeavor that spans state, local, and federal agencies. Over the past five years, the federal government has spent $2.4 billion on average<\/a> to fight wildfires per year. Inside the Interior Department alone, there are multiple divisions with a hand in fire operations, including the Office of Wildland Fire, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. Meanwhile, the US Forest Service, which conducts the bulk of federal firefighting, is currently a part of the Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n

As the federal government dithers over who should take the lead on fighting wildfires, the dangers<\/a> are only growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US fire management system itself is strained close to the breaking point,\u201d said David Calkin, a wildfire consultant and a former scientist at the US Forest Service. \u201cThe way we prepare for fire is a heavily bureaucratic intergovernmental process that is not agile to the rapidly increasing complexity of fires.\u201d<\/p>\n

But is a new wildfire service the solution?<\/p>\n

Some of the experts I spoke to said there\u2019s merit to the idea of putting the government\u2019s wildfire-related work under one roof. However, there are worries among firefighters, land managers, and researchers about how this effort will play out, particularly if it places too much emphasis on putting out fires and not enough on the slow, tedious work of reducing their overall threat in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of concern, but it\u2019s based on uncertainty and a bit of fear,\u201d said Christopher Dunn<\/a>, a former wildland firefighter and now an assistant professor studying wildfire risk at Oregon State University. \u201cIt could come out to be very helpful to the workforce, helpful to our landscapes if it\u2019s done right. It could also crash and burn.\u201d<\/p>\n

What we know about the Wildland Fire Service so far<\/p>\n

The Interior Department said the goal of the Wildland Fire Service is to increase efficiency and lower costs<\/a>. The new unit would not just fight fires, but manage fuels and rehabilitate burned areas.<\/p>\n

However, since Congress didn\u2019t provide the money to consolidate fire-related offices across different agencies, the Interior Department said that right now, it\u2019s only reorganizing internally. \u201cNo new funding is being obligated, and no structural changes requiring congressional authorization are being implemented at this stage,\u201d an Interior Department spokesperson wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

That limits the impact of the new service because the bulk of federal firefighting capacity is at the US Forest Service. \u201cThe Forest Service currently represents somewhere between 70 and 75 percent of all suppression capacity,\u201d Calkin said. But only 20 percent of wildfires ignite on federal land<\/a>, which means most of the initial responses come from state and local fire agencies. There\u2019s only so much the federal government can do in the early stages of most fires.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

A \u201cVery High\u201d fire danger warning is posted at Angeles National Forest Headquarters in Arcadia, California. Frederic J. Brown\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

There are also concerns about how the Wildland Fire Service will set its priorities. \u201cThere are valid reasons to support creating a fire management agency, but this is a firefighting force, and that is part of the problem,\u201d said Timothy Ingalsbee<\/a>, director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology and a former firefighter. \u201cWaiting around for a wildfire during these hot, dry, windy conditions that are becoming more frequent due to climate change, we\u2019ll never get ahead of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur primary purpose and mission is wildland fire suppression,\u201d wrote Fennessy, the veteran fire chief named to lead the Wildland Fire Service, in a January 12 email to staff. \u201cAt the same time, we have a duty to improve fire mitigation strategies and programs across all bureaus.\u201d<\/p>\n

That latter part is especially tricky because fire mitigation strategies \u2014 things like forest thinning and controlled burns \u2014 can conflict with or detract from other priorities for federal land managers, like protecting wildlife, encouraging recreation, promoting economic development, and facilitating the extraction of resources like timber, oil, and gas. On the other hand, taking firefighting off the plate of divisions like the US Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service could allow them to better focus on other aspects of their missions that could help reduce fire dangers over the long term.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a huge backlog of fire risk reduction work as well. Back in 2019, the Government Accountability Office estimated that there are 100 million acres<\/a> of federal land that need fuel treatments to reduce fire dangers, but only about 1 to 3 million acres per year receive<\/a> this mitigation.<\/p>\n

Another worry is that a sudden change in the organizational structure that, even if it ultimately leads to a more effective response, could create dysfunction in the short term. \u201cIf you rush this and the system is more dysfunctional at least for some period of time while it\u2019s trying to build and find its footing, you\u2019re exposing firefighters to greater hazards,\u201d Dunn said.<\/p>\n

The nature of wildfires is changing. So should the response.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to remember that fires are an essential part of many healthy ecosystems, and the history of over-emphasis on suppression has fueled the wildfire crisis we face today. Decades of trying to contain natural wildfires and barring Indigenous burning practices<\/a> have allowed vegetation to accumulate, including invasive plant species<\/a> that can readily ignite. More people are living closer to grasses, forests, and shrubs, increasing the odds of igniting a fire and worsening the damage that results.<\/p>\n

These sprawled-out communities also create political pressure to suppress fires because people don\u2019t want their homes threatened and don\u2019t want to breathe smoke. Fire risk-reduction tactics like controlled burns pose their own risks<\/a> to communities, and the windows of ideal temperature, rain, and wind conditions for conducting them are shrinking<\/a>. But none of this changes the fact that after decades of determined suppression, we owe a debt of fire to the landscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more you fight fire, the more you have to fight fire, and the worse you get at it,\u201d Calkin said. \u201cNot really addressing the fundamentals of the fire paradox would perpetuate and exacerbate the problems we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the while, humans are heating up the planet, amplifying the conditions<\/a> that can lead to major blazes. \u201cThe fires are faster and more intense and just fundamentally different than they were 30 years ago,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cThat\u2019s really stressing that workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges for firefighters is the rise of urban conflagrations<\/a>. Some of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires are not sparked in the middle of the forest, but inside vulnerable communities on private property.<\/p>\n

Dunn explained that municipal firefighters are trained to enter structures, rescue people, and prevent the flames from spreading to nearby buildings. Wildland firefighters typically don\u2019t enter structures at all and focus on breaking up lines of trees and grasses that serve as fuel. But fires like the ones that burned in Los Angeles in 2025 are a sort of hybrid between urban and rural fires, where entire blocks ignite at once, the homes themselves are the fuel, and winds send torrents of embers miles away. It\u2019s a scenario that demands a new suite of tactics and training, something that a Wildland Fire Service could theoretically provide.<\/p>\n

Private property owners will have to step up as well. Many may not realize how vulnerable their homes are to wildfires because historical models of wildfire risk vastly underestimate the dangers they face today and into the future<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Homeowners will have to invest in more fire-resistant materials for their houses, while neighborhoods will need to clear larger defensible perimeters and build in fire breaks. But enforcing these measures is a task outside the purview of the federal government. \u201cPublic land management in the forest is not going to have a significant reduction of those types of events,\u201d Calkin said.<\/p>\n

And of course, there\u2019s the Trump element.<\/p>\n

After the Los Angeles wildfires in 2025, Trump threatened to withhold federal disaster aid money from California<\/a>. A federal firefighting agency could potentially be used as a political lever during a crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor such an organization to be successful, it has to have a long-range vision that includes a really significant component of fire on the ground, it has to be responsive to local conditions, and it has to be protected from the political whims,\u201d Calkin said.<\/p>\n

Smoothing over bureaucratic trenches would definitely be a step in the right direction, but curbing the growing danger of wildfires is a generational project that demands continuous effort long after the flames die down and long before the next ones ignite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildfires have consumed thousands of buildings, killed dozens of people, and smothered millions in choking smoke in recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[2084,242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-275980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}