Firefighters with the U.S. Forest Service's Kings Peak Wildland Fire Module work the Willow Fire on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. Public domain photo
by Robert Chaney
Federal budget documents confirm the Trump administration’s intention to strip U.S. Forest Service wildfire duties and transferring them to a centralized wildland fire service housed in the Department of Interior.
Interior’s Budget In Brief report was released June 2. It includes a six-page document describing the mission of a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. And it requests $6.55 billion for operations and a reserve fund in Fiscal Year 2026.
Congress would have to pass new laws in addition to approving President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget for the change to take place. That means it won’t affect wildland firefighting this summer, which has already tallied 29,694 incidents burning 1.2 million acres.
The proposal also has some government watchdogs speculating it could lead to the wholesale absorption of the Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture, into Interior and its Bureau of Land Management.
“Under the new USWFS, command and appropriations for all WFM [wildland fire management] activities of Interior and [Forest Service] will be consolidated to streamline federal wildfire suppression response, risk mitigation, and coordination with non-federal partners to address the wildfire crisis,” the document states. “The new USWFS will employ federal WFM personnel working on lands administered by Interior and [Forest Service], including wildland firefighters, wildfire risk mitigation planners, and support personnel. It also will fund tribal nations’ WFM personnel. USWFS also will procure and maintain all wildland fire resources and manage federal wildland fire response policies. Additional operational capacity will be transferred from [Forest Service] to Interior in the future to ensure effective USWFS mission implementation.”
“This landmark reform will improve the effectiveness of Federal wildfire response, streamline coordination with non-Federal partners, and better position America to combat the wildfire crisis,” the Forest Service document states.
Its proposed budget zeros out the $2.4 billion 2025 allocation for wildland fire management and the $2.4 billion wildfire suppression operations reserve fund.
Meanwhile, the Interior document anticipates receiving $3.7 billion for Wildland Fire Service operations plus $2.85 billion more in reserve funding for a total $6.55 billion in 2026.
“The new USWFS will employ federal WFM personnel working on lands administered by Interior and [Forest Service], including wildland firefighters, wildfire risk mitigation planners, and support personnel." – U.S. Department of Interior Budget Brief, FY 2026
The new fire agency would have responsibility for all wildfires on all U.S. public lands: more than 693 million acres when the Interior and Forest Service public lands are combined. That’s almost twice as big as the state of Alaska, or just over one-third of the Lower 48 states.
It would also require a major shift of duties. Currently, the Forest Service fields about 11,500 wildland firefighters and handles about 70 percent of the contracting for food service, showers, transportation and other logistics, according to Forest Service officials. Interior’s firefighting services within the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs deploy about 6,000 firefighters and manage about 15 percent of the logistical contracting.
The White House considered creating a new wildland fire agency by executive order in April. Montana Senator Tim Sheehy also submitted the Fit For Purpose Wildfire Readiness Act of 2025, which has not yet had a committee hearing. That bill would order the secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to make a plan for consolidating their respective wildfire resources into a national wildland firefighting service within the Interior Department.
Sheehy’s office did not return a Mountain Journal request for comment by press time.
The Mormon Lake Hotshots dig fireline amid towering evergreens during the Cedar Creek Fire in the Willamette National Forest in Oregon. Photo courtesy Alaska Incident Management Team
The proposal may also indicate steps toward combining Interior’s Bureau of Land Management with the Forest Service, and possibly other public lands agencies. It mentions proposed legislation transferring budget authority from the Forest Service and to “foster collaborative land management within Interior and between the two departments.” It anticipates building or maintaining “housing for wildland firefighters, fire operations equipment storage and aerial firefighting support bases,” all of which the Forest Service already has. And it calls for consolidating Forest Service and Interior wildland fire information technology, including the Joint Fire Science Program currently shared by the two departments.
The concept for a consolidated federal firefighting force has floated around public land debates for years at various intensities. In its analysis of the current wildland fire service proposal, the nonprofit organization Megafire Action put it succinctly: “In short: if the Wildland Fire Service is going to work, it needs the whole Forest Service, not just parts of it.”
Megafire Action National Policy Director Eric Horne added the common concern: “Putting the Wildland Fire Service in Interior in charge of fuels management, while keeping responsibility for 193 million acres of Forest Service land under a separate secretary at USDA, risks repeating the same fragmentation that has long undermined effective wildfire prevention.”
Horne did not return a request from Mountain Journal for additional comment.
The Forest Service also handles things like the Vegetation and Watershed Management Program, which oversees invasive species control, post-fire restoration and prescribed fire; the Forest Inventory and Analysis program that develops the baseline ecological data firefighters use to strategize in the field; and Land Management Planning which deals with the timber, grazing, recreation and other activities on Forest Service lands that get affected by, and occasionally start, wildfires.
All those Forest Service programs face budget cuts of about 30 percent in the proposed FY 2026 budget. The budget also recommends eliminating the Forest Service’s entire $283 million State, Private and Tribal Forestry account and the $300 million Forest and Rangeland Research account. That includes cutting $76 million in State Fire Capacity grants and ends the Volunteer Fire Capacity grants, which provided $21 million in 2025. It would transfer $175 million in hazardous fuels management from the Forest Service to Interior’s Wildland Fire Service.
“The FY 2026 Budget seeks to restore federalism by encouraging States and local partners to fund their wildfire preparedness activities,” the document states as justification for ending the state assistance.
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About Robert Chaney
Robert Chaney grew up in western Montana and has spent most of his journalism career writing about the Rocky Mountain West, its people, and their environment. His book The Grizzly in the Driveway earned a 2021 Society of Environmental Journalists Rachel Carson Award. In Montana, Chaney has written, photographed, edited and managed for the Hungry Horse News, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Missoulian and Montana Free Press. He studied political science at Macalester College and has won numerous awards for his writing and photography, including fellowships at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the National Evolutionary Science Center at Duke University.
