A presidential proposal for consolidating federal wildland firefighting services failed to appear by its September 10 deadline.
How it might combine U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department firefighting resources after Congress rejected Trump administration spending requests remains unclear. But fixing the way the federal government combats wildfire on public land was the topic of several congressional hearings earlier in the week. It also drew anticipation from advocates who have called for the restructuring of wildfire response.
“We’re expecting something, but we don’t know what,” Partners in Wildfire Prevention Communications Director Chet Wade told Mountain Journal on Monday. “It’s a national problem that needs a national solution.”
Partners in Wildfire Prevention formed in February with a coalition of groups ranging from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership to the American Gas Association and Caregiver Action Network. That was shortly after wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed thousands of homes, and Montana Senator Tim Sheehy offered a bill to combine all federal firefighting resources under Interior Department management. President Donald Trump followed with a June 12 executive order, Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response that directed the Interior and Agriculture departments to come up with a plan. “Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior and Secretary of Agriculture shall … consolidate their wildland fire programs to achieve the most efficient and effective use of wildland fire offices,” the executive order read.
Federal wildfire resources are currently spread across the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. They deploy more than 12,000 personnel, about 80 percent of whom work in the Forest Service.
This spring, the Interior Department published a six-page document outlining how it planned to stand up a national wildfire service with a $6.5 billion budget in 2026. The Forest Service, which is housed in the Department of Agriculture, released its own budget overview anticipating the transfer of its firefighting resources and zeroing out its $4.8 billion in firefighting allocations.
In July, both the House and Senate budget committees rejected the proposals. The House Appropriations Committee budget report stated the plan “sparked concerns about impacted agencies’ abilities to consistently meet critical performance Benchmarks” and ordered a Government Accountability Office study before moving forward. The Senate report added “the committee is disappointed with the utter lack of regard for complying with Congressional intent on spending funds as appropriated.”
Meanwhile, Sheehy’s bill has yet to receive a hearing in the Senate. Most of the attention has gone to Arkansas Representative Bruce Westerman’s Fix Our Forests Act, which has passed the House and received a Senate hearing. However, Westerman’s bill doesn’t include provisions to combine the Forest Service and Interior fire services. Sheehy’s office did not return a request for comment.
And wildfire experts outside the federal government have noticed a lack of activity where they expected a flood of research requests, data gathering and other preparations for a major government initiative.
“It’s been crickets,” said Bill Avey, a retired Forest Service supervisor and former national fire director. “That whole thing has dropped off the radar screen.”
Federal wildfire resources are currently spread across multiple agencies which deploy more than 12,000 personnel, about 80 percent of whom work in the U.S. Forest Service.
Trump’s executive order called for many other things to happen in September besides a combined wildfire service. It also directed the Interior and Agriculture secretaries to create new state and local firefighting partnerships, change laws impeding the use of prescribed fire and fire retardant, protect electrical power utilities from wildfire risk and litigation, and promote the use of new wood products that might reduce forest fuel loads.
On the other hand, Trump’s 2026 budget anticipates cutting Forest Service staffing by an additional 26 percent after shedding more than 5,000 employees in 2025 through firings, buyouts and early retirements. That budget move did not account for the proposed wildland fire service consolidation or shifts in resources.
On September 3, the Forest Service announced it had a new long-term contract for aerial fire retardant which it claimed “secured total savings of $153 million over the next five years.” It also put out a release touting $8 million in new Joint Chiefs Landscape Restoration Partnership Program projects, including two in the Greater Yellowstone, that had wildfire preparedness features. But the Agriculture and Interior press offices had no other mentions of wildfire-related developments this summer. Neither agency responded to requests for comment from Mountain Journal.
The Agriculture Department in particular has been undergoing a wide-ranging reorganization of its own this year. Those plans have already drawn extensive controversy, including a snap-shot Senate hearing with both Republicans and Democrats demanding to know why they were left in the dark. Rollins then opened a public comment period on the effort, scheduled to close on August 31.
“It’s been crickets. That whole thing has dropped off the radar screen.”
Bill Avey, retired U.S. Forest Service supervisor, former national fire director
That window is now open until September 30. However, there’s no mention of the extension on the USDA news release website. Instead, its August 1 announcement of the public comment period was edited to push back the date.
On September 9, the House Subcommittee on Federal Lands heard from Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, who was grilled by Democratic members asking how he expected to keep forests safe while asking for a 75-percent reduction to his agency’s 2026 budget. Republicans applauded the impact of rescinding the Roadless Rule and praised Schultz for commitments to increasing timber harvest and moving ahead with plans to develop public lands now protected by the Roadless Rule.
The same day, the House Subcommittee on Forestry and Horticulture also debated the impact of rescinding the Roadless Rule. Tom DeLuca, dean of the Oregon State University Forestry School, pointed out that formerly logged areas tended to be more fire-risky than roadless areas while American Logging Council Director Scott Dane stated that public land forests were so overstocked, seven times as many trees die as get harvested for lumber.
Grassroots Wildland Firefighters is another organization that’s pushed for a consolidated federal fire service. Its director, Luke Mayfield, told Mountain Journal he expects the plan to move forward this week. But he also said a range of challenges still need attention.
“It should not come at the expense of proactive land management,” Mayfield said. “Things like fuels mitigation management and forest fire suppression — it’s not one or the other. And I know they can’t consolidate internally. It’s got to be an act of Congress. But not having these conversations is not helping anybody.”
