The federal government will combine its wildland firefighting operations within the Interior Department into a single new agency, dubbed the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, according to memos released Monday.
The new service aims to begin operations by January 2026 and will be overseen by a new fire chief who reports to the Interior Secretary.
Responsibility for fighting wildfires is currently split between the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the USDA, and multiple agencies within the Department of the Interior (DOI), including the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.
Those agencies, in turn, coordinate with state, tribal and local agencies when wildfires break out. But local agencies still contribute most of the boots on the ground.
The consolidation is the result of the Trump administration's efforts to streamline wildland firefighting. Guidance for the new wildland service was handed down Monday in a memo from Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture, and an order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Burgum and Rollins said the new agency is an effort to mitigate and better fight increasingly costly and destructive wildfires, and will boost collaboration with the Forest Service, which employs the largest share of federal wildland firefighters.
“By streamlining federal capabilities and strengthening our partnerships with state, tribal and local teams, we will deliver the common-sense reforms needed to safeguard our communities, our lands and our future,” said Interior Secretary Burgum in a statement.
There have been nearly 50,000 wildfires across the United States this year, which have scorched national parks, historic landmarks and 4.38 million acres, according to federal data.
The Trump administration has called the current system for battling wildfires “outdated” and “fragmented.”
In June, President Trump issued an executive order giving the DOI and the USDA 90 days to come up with a plan to consolidate their operations into a single new agency. That left some groups concerned, but Monday’s announcements left the Forest Service intact and did not shunt its wildland operations into the Interior Department.
Move is meant to address the spike in fires, but no mention of climate change
Completely combining the agencies would likely require congressional action and more funding, according to Tyson Bertone-Riggs, co-founder of the policy group Alliance for Wildfire Resilience.
Bertone-Riggs co-led the congressionally authorized Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, which published a report in 2023 to improve the government’s response to wildfires. He said Monday’s orders dovetailed with many of those recommendations.
“We think it's aligned with about a dozen of the commission recommendations, specifically things ranging from modernization of science and technology, to greater emphasis on pre-fire mitigation and post-fire recovery,” he said.
The orders do not mention climate change, which has been linked to an increase in the severity and number of wildfires across the West. Trump administration officials have called climate change a hoax and targeted climate policies from previous administrations.
But Bertone-Riggs said that cutting greenhouse gas emissions, while important, does not fix decades of land management issues that have contributed to mega-fires.
“There's a lot that we can do here that is much more immediate and tangible,” he said. “Even if we were to reduce emissions tomorrow, we will still have these problems for decades to come.”
“Devil’s in the details” for new agency and new policies
Besides creating a new agency, the orders also aimed to permanently increase wildland firefighter pay, modernize computer systems, streamline how agencies contract for equipment, and facilitate more prescribed burns, which can reduce future fire risk.
“There are some things that could be helpful,” said Steve Ellis, chair of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees and a trained wildfire responder. “We’ll have to see how it plays out.”
The order also aims to update standards for personal protective equipment used by wildland firefighters. For decades, the Forest Service banned its firefighters from wearing masks that filtered out toxins and carcinogenic chemicals, claiming they would burden firefighters. The agency reversed the ban last week.
Several wildfire policy and advocacy groups praised Monday’s orders as an improvement over the status quo. But they also cautioned that the “devil’s in the details” for how the plan is implemented.
Luke Mayfield, president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group, said now it’s up to the Interior Department to hire a new head of its Wildland Fire Service and sell the plan to rank-and-file employees.
“Now, can you put the right people in place … to get the buy-in of the workforce and provide a clear vision of what this is going to look like and how it’s going to be led,” he said.
The Interior Department’s fiscal year 2026 budget request said it would cost $6.55 billion to combine its wildland operations with the Forest Service’s operations.
But since Monday’s announcement no longer combines the two departments, it’s unclear how much the new agency will cost to set up and operate.
