Wildfire prevention work declines under Trump administration : NPR

With wildfires already burning and drought persisting across much of the US, firefighting experts are bracing for what could be a devastating fire season. The U.S. Forest Service is doing much less than in recent years to manage dry, flammable vegetation that can fuel catastrophic fires.

In 2025, the Forest Service will reduce vegetation on about 1.5 million fewer acres of land than in 2024, according to an analysis of agency data by NPR and fire experts. This marks a significant decline from the more than 4 million acres of hazardous vegetation work the Biden administration conducted in the past year.

The largest declines were in prescribed burns, low-grade fires deliberately set to clear dense brush, helping to reduce the intensity of future wildfires. In 2025, the Forest Service will burn only about half the acreage it did in both 2024 and 2023, according to an NPR analysis of agency records.

Despite severe wildfires in recent years, there is actually a Lack of fire in most parts of the country. Many North American forests evolved over millennia with low-intensity wildfires that clear dense undergrowth. Native Americans used controlled burning to shape ecosystems, but these measures became much less common after tribes were forced from their lands. In the 1930s the Forest Service also adopted a policy To extinguish all forest fires.

As conditions become warmer, the build-up of dense vegetation has fueled extreme fires that are destroying vast tracts of land and rapidly spreading through communities.

The Forest Service said in a statement that the decline in prevention work was due to most crews remaining engaged in firefighting and because environmental conditions were not right for prescribed burns in the Southeast. Agency lost 16% of its workforce As of last summer, 5,860 workers were slated to leave in the first six months of 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the size of government. The Senate is held by the Democrats. raised concerns Such cuts have hindered the agency’s ability to prepare for wildfires.

Wildfire experts say that the fewer prescribed fires are burned, the more likely the Forest Service is to face conditions that lead to extreme wildfires.

“The clock is ticking,” says Matthew Hurteau, a forest ecologist at the University of New Mexico. “We’ve got a relatively limited amount of time to do the work that needs to be done.”

Without small burns, there are big burns

Last time out, Herto faced the toughest day of his career.

For 25 years, he has worked in a forest in California’s Sierra Nevada Teakettle Experimental ForestHome to old-growth sugar and Jeffrey pine trees. As one of the Forest Service experimental forestIt is like a living laboratory with 3,200 acres of land set aside by the agency in the 1930s as an area of ​​special study and research.

The forest had become dense because there had been no major forest fire since 1865. It was also filled with dead trees, victims of California’s extended drought a decade earlier, which had allowed the beetles to move in. Hurto and his colleagues saw that the forest was in danger and, in 2020, began planning a prescribed burn.

“We all knew this was what the forest needed to reduce the chance that a high-intensity wildfire would sweep through and destroy all the old-growth pine trees,” Hurto says.

Working with the Climate & Wildfire Institute, a wildfire nonprofit, the project received more than $5 million from California’s state fire agency, CalFIRE. Being in the Sierra National Forest, the Forest Service required an environmental review to be completed before burning could begin.

Hurto says the process took a long time.

“It took a lot longer than it should have,” Hurto says. “We lacked the will in the forest and ranger district leadership to facilitate the implementation of this burn.”

Then, last August, a lightning strike nearby ignited the Garnet Fire. It spread due to dry conditions and irregular winds.

“The entire experimental forest burned in one day and it got quite hot,” says Hurto.

In October, Herto went back to Tecatel to survey the damage, and found that many of the old-growth trees he knew well had not survived.

“I’m not one to have emotional outbursts, but I broke down and cried five times that day,” he says. “It was a very hard thing to watch.”

Forest Service staff at the Sierra National Forest did not respond to questions about Teakettle’s planned prescribed burn. Hurto says that although many land managers and fire experts are working to restore forest health, controlled burning is still not being done adequately.

“There was a vibe there that gave me some hope that we would make some real progress,” Hurto says. “When Tecatetel burned down like that, some of the optimism evaporated.”

Prescribed fire goes out

The Forest Service has said for decades Prescribed burning is a priority. The agency has set a goal of reducing burning fuels on an additional 20 million acres over the next decade by 2022. In April, current Forest Service chief Tom Schultz highlighted how that type of work made a difference in California’s 2021 Caldor Fire.

“We had an area that we had managed over the last five years,” Schultz. said in testimony In the budget hearing of the House. “The fire got there. It didn’t reach the crowns. It stayed on the ground. It had a beneficial effect. That’s because of the management.”

In 2023, the Forest Service plans to reduce hazardous vegetation by approximately 3.7 million acres and, in 2024, by more than 4 million acres. That work fell by 2.6 million acres during the first year of Trump’s second administration, according to an analysis shared with NPR by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and Redstone GIS Consulting. This involves mechanically cutting and removing vegetation, in addition to burning.

Prescribed burning, which had reached more than 1.6 million acres in both 2023 and 2024, is set to fall to about 900,000 acres in 2025, according to an NPR analysis of agency data. The Forest Service, which analyzes its data based on the fiscal year that starts in October, says it burned 1 million fewer acres in fiscal year 2025.

Forest Service employees informed about this Agency work slow After Trump took office, this led to efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency to cut staff and programs. After thousands of workers left the agency or were fired, Senate Democrats raised concerns This is affecting the country’s ability to deal with forest fires.

schulze testified recently The agency hired about 9,700 firefighters in early March, slightly more than last year. The agency is also proposing that Forest Service firefighters be transferred to new US Wildland Fire ServiceWhich consolidates all employees of the Interior Fire Department.

Fire experts say these hires won’t necessarily replace lost key support staff.

“There are a lot of people who help a fire organization get the job done that are not firefighters,” says Bobby Scoppa, vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit advocacy group for firefighters. “If you remove a contracting officer who is not a fire department person, that could have the unintended consequence of reducing a tremendous amount of fuel reduction work because you can’t terminate contracts.”

The Forest Service said in a statement that the decline in burning in 2025 occurred mostly in the Southeastern U.S. “due to increased wildfire activity and increased fire behavior due to excessive fuel loads from Hurricane Helene and other environmental factors.” Prescribed burning also declined in many other states not affected by Hurricane Helene, agency data shows.

While most Forest Service land is west of the Mississippi, there have been twice as many prescribed fires in Southern states over the past four years compared to Western states. is in the southeastern states Long-standing policies and training programs Which encourage prescribed inflammation.

what gets in the way of prescribed fire

Even in most years, the Forest Service faces challenges in using prescribed fire. Most burns occur only during short windows when conditions are cool and wet in the spring and fall. While most burns are caused by certain issues, fires have survived in rare cases, such as one in New Mexico in 2022, which caused losses to the Forest Service. stop burning across the country.

Typically, prescribed burns are stopped due to Forest Service personnel busy fighting forest fires. Fire experts say this starts a vicious cycle. As wildfires become more severe, agency personnel have less time to reduce vegetation, known as hazardous fuel work, setting the stage for even larger fires.

“We have worse conditions than ever before and the growing season is longer,” Scoppa says. “We need more people. We need more firefighters and we need people to do the fuel job separately.”

Controlled burning isn’t just about forest health. Scoppa says reducing flammable fuels gives wildland firefighters a better chance of fighting wildfires in increasingly challenging conditions.

“We do fuel reduction not because it will stop fires, but because it gives firefighters more space to fight fires efficiently and effectively and safely,” Scoppa says. “If you send firefighters into a wild area that hasn’t been treated, it’s going to be more difficult.”