Wildfire risk is rising; the administration is making things worse.

Last year, a series of wildfires devastated the Los Angeles metro area: More than 50,000 acres burned, thousands of homes were destroyed, hundreds of thousands were forced to evacuate and at least a few dozen people were killed in the blazes.

The scale of this disaster was unprecedented and largely the product of climate change. The ongoing “megadrought” of the Western United States turned the grassy hills of Southern California into a tinderbox, while unusually strong “Santa Ana winds” drove containable blazes into raging infernos.

The Los Angeles fires were a red alarm for the entire nation that extreme wildfires have become an existential threat to human communities and our environment. But the crisis also revealed the then-incoming administration’s public lands agenda: deny climate change and baselessly accuse conservation policies of being overly restrictive, weaponizing understandable public fear to push their own policies.

That’s exactly what we’ve seen this administration do over the past year. Now, as extreme wildfires are made worse by climate impacts, the administration is gutting the nation's firefighting force while targeting protections for some of the country’s last undeveloped national forests. The result is a dangerous contradiction: more ignition risk, fewer wildfire defenses and more public lands, wildlife and communities in harm’s way.

Though the sudden termination of more than 3,000 US Forest Service workers in February 2025 was dramatic, it was only the beginning of a relentless dismantling effort at the agency. According to the agency’s own reporting, 16% of its staff (nearly 6,000 people) resigned over the course of the year, largely due to coordinated harassment and intimidation by senior administration officials.

At least 700—and possibly more than 1,600—of the affected staff held Incident Qualification Cards, or "red cards."  These are specifically trained professionals who, while working other full-time jobs in the agency, aid in emergency response to and pre-emptive mitigation of wildfires. These cuts shattered the “backbone” of an already strained workforce, according to retired career staffer Frank Beum, and have already had a grave direct impact on the agency’s capacity to fight wildfires. Last year, an analysis by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters found that staff shortfalls and additional budget cuts had led to 38% drop in hazardous fuels reduction work—the critical mitigation efforts that help prevent extreme wildfires.

The losses could be made worse by the current reorganization of the Forest Service, which will move the agency headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Utah. History has shown that dramatic changes such as this result in major staff losses: When the first Trump administration moved the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction,  Colorado, 87% of staff chose to leave rather than relocate, creating a massive “brain drain” that the agency never recovered from.

Compounding this mess is the administration’s ongoing attempt to stand-up the controversial U.S. Wildland Fire Service. Delivering upon the Executive Order, Secretary Doug Burgum has consolidated the Department of the Interior such that all wildland fire operations operate out of a single office in the nation’s capital. These consolidated operations will divorce fire management from the ongoing and proactive local stewardship that helps reduce bigger risks down the line. The National Association of Forest Service Retirees condemned this move, writing in a letter to Congress that the change would only make conditions worse and overly focus on suppression rather than prevention. 

Meanwhile, the Forest Service is in the middle of its outrageous attempt to repeal protections for 45 million acres of “roadless” national forests. Finalized in 2001 with near unanimous public approval and broad bipartisan support, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule established protections for the nation’s wildest, undeveloped forests. These forests  provide clean water, critical wildlife habitat and the freedom to explore wild public lands. Protecting them keeps landscapes healthy and intact for future generations. Repealing the rule to open the door for commercial logging and development will not only jeopardize all that these forests offer, but also dangerously elevate wildfire risk.

Recent research by The Wilderness Society that analyzed three decades of fire ignitions data found that building more roads in national forests is likely to result in more fire. In a public congressional hearing, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz himself affirmed that fires are more likely to occur near roads because of human ignition points like hot catalytic converters and tossed cigarettes.

Put simply: The administration is willing to dramatically increase wildfire risk (sacrificing broadly popular forest protections in the process) while the nation’s wildland firefighting force is already stretched dangerously thin—all to greenlight more logging and development.