Interior Dept to Consolidate Wildland Firefighters
The U.S. Interior Department is consolidating its wildland firefighters into a single agency. The move aims to streamline emergency response and improve resource allocation across the Pacific Northwest and other regions. This shift signals a trend toward greater interagency cooperation for fire services.
- The new consolidated agency will be named the U.S. Wildland Fire Service and is scheduled to begin operations by January 2026. - This reorganization will unify wildland firefighting resources 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. - In 2024, the Interior Department employed a total of 5,780 federal wildland fire personnel, with an additional 900 tribal personnel employed through the department. The Bureau of Indian Affairs' wildland fire programs included approximately 2,915 firefighters and support staff. The National Park Service's program includes around 400 permanent and 600 seasonal employees. - Brian Fennessy, former fire chief for San Diego and Orange County, has been appointed to lead the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. - The U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture and operates the nation's largest wildland firefighting force with over 11,300 firefighters, is not part of this consolidation. - The consolidation effort faces financial hurdles; Congress has not endorsed the new agency and denied the administration's $6.5 billion funding request for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service in the fiscal year 2026 budget. - The move was initiated by a June 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump aimed at streamlining the federal response to increasingly destructive wildfires. - In addition to consolidating personnel, the plan includes standardizing firefighter positions and pay, creating a unified wildfire risk mapping tool, and establishing a joint federal firefighting aircraft service.
