US Consolidates Wildland Firefighters
The U.S. Department of the Interior is moving to consolidate its wildland firefighter operations into a single agency. The move signals an increased focus on interagency cooperation for wildfire response. This trend has potential implications for how urban departments like Seattle coordinate on wildland-urban interface incidents.
- The new "U.S. Wildland Fire Service" consolidates firefighting operations from four agencies within the Department of the Interior: the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. - The country's largest wildland firefighting agency, the U.S. Forest Service, is not part of this consolidation as it operates under the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of the Interior. - This reorganization stems from a June 2025 executive order, with the Department of the Interior aiming for the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service to be operational by January 2026. - Brian Fennessy, former chief of San Diego Fire-Rescue and the Orange County Fire Authority, has been appointed to lead the new service. - Congress has not endorsed a full consolidation of all federal wildland firefighting agencies; the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill continued to fund the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior separately to allow for further consideration of such a major change. - A key driver for reform has been workforce challenges; for example, the U.S. Forest Service saw 45% of its permanent wildland firefighters leave the agency in the three years prior to 2024. - Specific goals of the consolidation include creating a joint federal firefighting aircraft service, standardizing procurement and payment systems, and building a unified Wildfire Enterprise IT system.
