Two federal agencies recently outlined a proposal to create a single federal wildland fire agency.
It would be called the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, according to budget documents from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior. The agency would consolidate the wildland fire programs of the USDA and Interior within the latter. The change, according to Interior’s summary, would create “an integrated, cost-efficient, and operationally more effective organization.”
“The guiding program principles and priorities are to reduce wildfire risk, create fire-resilient landscapes, promote fire-adapted communities, and safely and effectively respond to wildfires through strong collaboration and empowered Tribal, State, and local communities,” it continued.
Currently, the federal firefighting force is split between the U.S. Forest Service, under the USDA, and four other agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, under Interior. Earlier this year, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that would also support the creation of a single wildland firefighting service.
“For too long, layers of senseless bureaucracy and red tape have splintered our wildfire management system, failed our brave firefighters on the ground, and let entire communities be wiped off the map by wildfire,” bill co-sponsor, Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican, said in a recent news release.
“The problem of wildfire is real, it's growing,” said Tyson Bertone-Riggs, a managing director with the Alliance for Wildfire Resilience. “There's a real opportunity for bipartisan solutions here. This is not a politically coded problem.”
Bertone-Riggs, who previously worked with a congressionally-created commission that made dozens of consensus recommendations for addressing the national wildfire crisis, said that to be successful, state, tribal and local voices must be involved in the development of the new agency. He also pointed out the proposed budget for partnerships with and grants to non-federal entities was fairly small.
“What that process looks like matters a lot,” he said. “But I think it is an opportunity to see much needed reforms in the wildfire system.”
Annie Schmidt is also a managing director at AFR, and served on the wildfire commission, which heavily emphasized the necessity of using fire itself as a tool through strategies like prescribed burning. She hopes to see those ideas also influence the development of the national service.
“The Commission was very clear that urgent, urgent new approaches were needed,” she said, adding that seeing some of those issues addressed in initial documents is “encouraging.”
“In general, the willingness to tackle some of the issues that have plagued the system for years is a good thing,” she added.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
