Washington Post: Trump wants to remake the way we fight wildfires. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

The Trump administration on Friday outlined the most detailed plans yet for its new Wildland Fire Service, which would overhaul how the nation fights wildfires in the run up to what experts say could be one of the worst U.S. fire seasons in recent memory.

As intense drought conditions turn the American West into a tinderbox, firefighters and fire policy experts argue a unified super agency will help the country confront a new era of megafires. But congressional Democrats and public lands advocates warn it could strip away even more employees from land management agencies weakened by the U.S. DOGE Service.

The Interior Department launched the Wildland Fire Service in January, combining all firefighting operations previously overseen by the department's Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Office of Aviation Services and Office of Wildland Fire. On Friday, the administration elaborated how it would operate the new agency for fiscal year 2027, proposing a $4 billion budget and 4,500-person staff. The plan also would fund a new center for centralizing wildfire intelligence.

"The legacy approach to Federal wildland fire risk mitigation and response is fractured and has led to significant coordination and cost inefficiencies, which endanger lives, infrastructure, and national treasures," the budget proposal said.

Some experts say the U.S. has entered an era of larger, faster-spreading fires that the old decentralized federal system is no longer equipped to handle. Climate change means fire seasons are growing longer and intensifying droughts, leaving more dried out vegetation that serves as fuel.

This year's extremely dry winter in the Western United States means that the snowpack - the main source of moisture - is at record lows in many places. States such as Arizona and Colorado are seeing major conflagrations unusually early this year, ahead of the normal fire season.

That raises the stakes for the new agency.

Firefighters and multiple experts praised the concept of a consolidated agency that could speed up communications, given that a few hours can mean the difference between putting out a small blaze or allowing it to grow into a major inferno. They emphasized that how the new agency is implemented will be key.

"We believe that this current system is not built to deal with the era of wildfire that we're facing right now and the intensity and the scale of the problem," said Matt Weiner, chief executive of the advocacy group Megafire Action. "We need to make sure we get this right."

Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which advocates for firefighters, has called for a unified agency since its founding in 2019, its president Riva Duncan said in a statement, adding that creating the agency "is an exciting step" and "we believe it can best serve not just the boots on the ground but the public as well."

She said the organization supports the administration's eventual goal of moving the Forest Service's firefighting operations out of the Agriculture Department into the new agency, a change that may require congressional approval.

Trump instructed Interior and USDA to consolidate its fire programs in a June 2025 executive order , citing the slow and inadequate response" to the devastating Los Angeles fires earlier that year.

The Forest Service operates primarily as a land management agency that has historically also employed the nation's largest wildland firefighting force. If its firefighting staff was added to the Wildland Fire Service, according to the Trump plan, the new agency would have more than 11,300 employees. That would make it twice the size of BLM, which oversees more than 10 percent of the nation's land mass.

Dan Munsey, the fire chief of San Bernardino County who has repeatedly testified before Congress about the systemic issues plaguing the nation's wildland firefighting system, said the country would be better positioned to fight fires if it was separated from agriculture.

For example, Munsey said, firefighters might say, "we need fire breaks here to protect this community or this particular aspect of the forest" while land managers are focused on species or habitat protection, "which is important, but they may not really be considering the fire dangers of that wildland management."

"This is seen as a good move," he said. "In the scope of fighting fire, local agencies see this as a really good thing."

Critics, however, said the shift will further debilitate understaffed land management agencies by stripping out thousands of employees.

Tracy Stone-Manning, the BLM director under President Joe Biden, said the agency had nearly 10,000 staffers at the end of her tenure in January 2025. She estimates there are only about 5,000 people left after the Trump administration's efforts to shrink the workforce and the fire agency's creation.

"They're going to break our public land management agencies," Stone-Manning said.

Previously, firefighting staff had typically filled in by doing land management jobs at the chronically understaffed agency during the offseason, she said, adding it will be harder now that they report to a different chain of command.

Interior spokeswoman Elizabeth Peace said personnel now under the Wildland Fire Service will focus solely on fire-related responsibilities.

"The increasingly complex wildland fire environment now requires a professional workforce that is positioned to meet wildfire response and mitigation needs year-round," she said in an email.

While fire service staff will not help with land management tasks, the other agencies will continue to assist in firefighting. During peak fire season, the fire agency will be able to tap into staffers across Interior known as "red card" holders - those with training to fight fires - as that system will remain unchanged, Peace said.

Nearly a dozen Senate and House Democrats, including Sens. Martin Heinrich (New Mexico) and Jeff Merkley (Oregon), sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in February opposing the unified fire agency's creating, citing concerns about understaffing at agencies such as BLM.

They also criticized the administration for launching the agency with little input from the public or Congress.

"We are concerned that the DOI is advancing a rapid and consequential restructuring of wildfire management without adequate analysis, transparency, or planning to prevent disruption during what is expected to be a significant fire season or to safeguard long-term wildfire preparedness," they wrote.

Stone-Manning said the creation of the fire agency is "a solution in search of a problem" as there are already structures in place to coordinate between agencies, particularly the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Tim Murphy, a former fire and aviation director for the center, described having twice daily meetings among the federal agencies, which also included local representatives, to coordinate firefighting. The center also ensured equipment was shared among them.

"We literally sat shoulder-to-shoulder at 10 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, and we would discuss what's happening in real time and make decisions," Murphy said.

But Murphy, who expressed confidence in the new agency's head Brian Fennessy, said it "has the potential to improve" communications, preparedness and response after fires.

Fennessy has experience fighting both wildland and structure fires as the former longtime fire chief in Orange County, California. Weiner of Megafire Action said Fennessy has a reputation for adopting new technology and taking an aggressive attitude toward putting fires out early, rather than seeking to control fires without completely extinguishing them.

The primary risk for fire season is that the wrong calls will be made on where to allocate resources to extinguish and control blazes, leading to more destructive fires, several experts said. Murphy said there's a risk that if a major fire is underway and resources are overallocated there, it could mean there aren't enough firefighters and equipment to tackle other fires before they get out of control.

Advocates agree the potentially bad fire year puts more pressure on the new agency just as its getting started.

"I've been in the West for most of the last couple of months on field visits, and everyone I'm talking to is like, 'This is as bad as I've seen it in a very long time,'" Weiner said. "It has the potential to be really catastrophic."

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