The Trump Administration is proposing to consolidate wildfire fighting forces from across the federal government into a single agency.

President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal outlines plans to create a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service by combining the wildfire assets currently distributed between the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.

The budget request states that the “dispersed nature” of the federal wildfire program “creates significant coordination and cost inefficiencies that result in sub-optimal performance.” It would house the U.S. Wildland Fire Service in the Department of Interior.

But in a letter to the Senate earlier this month, a nonprofit group representing thousands of U.S. Forest Service retirees, including seven previous chiefs of the agency, raised concern that consolidating federal firefighting operations would be “a costly mistake.”

“Wildfire management is more than extinguishing fires,” National Association of Forest Service Retirees Chair Steve Ellis wrote in the letter. “The critical linkage between fire suppression and forest management, including fuels reduction and prescribed fire, must be maintained. Severing forest management and forest managers from fire suppression will make firefighting less safe and put communities at greater risk.”

Located under the Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Forest Service employs more than 10,000 professional firefighters annually, comprising more than half of the federal wildfire fighting program. The Bureau of Land Management, the nation’s second largest wildland firefighting force, employs less than 6,000 firefighters annually.

Colorado has 14.5 million acres of land — or about 22% of the state — that is managed by the Forest Service and another 8.3 million acres — or about 13% of the state — that is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

In addition to relocating firefighting operations, Trump’s budget request for the Forest Service asks Congress to zero out millions of dollars of funding, including for forestry research and grants that support state, tribal and private forestry efforts. It also proposes cuts of $392 million to the Forest Service management budget and $391 million to forest operations.

“It’s like taking Smokey Bear away from the Forest Service,” Ellis said in an interview. “If you lose Smokey Bear. If you lose research. If you lose state, tribal and private (grants). It sort of hollows things out as far as historically what the agency has been. I don’t think it would result in a more efficient way to manage our national forests. It could make it worse.”

Trump Administration points to Los Angeles fires

Ellis, who worked for the federal government for 38 years in both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, said “the fire program is integrated into almost everything the Forest Service does.”

From forest thinning to prescribed burns, prevention and suppression, Ellis said strategies have to be integrated into the broader forest management goals. By removing firefighting operations from the Forest Service, the proposal could divorce firefighting from land management, he added.

“It’s tied into everything they do. So you’ve got to stop and you’ve got to ask, ‘What is broken? What are they fixing?” Ellis said. “What isn’t working that you have to create this new national firefighting force?”

When asked about the U.S. Wildland Fire Service proposal, White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers pointed to the Los Angeles wildfires that killed 30 people, forced 200,000 to evacuate and burned 57,000 acres earlier this year.

“After observing the federal, state, and local government’s failed response to the California wildfires and other natural tragedies, the President is strengthening disaster mitigation by modernizing prevention and response efforts by utilizing new technology,” Rogers said in an email. “The Administration is strengthening partnerships and aid capabilities between state and local governments to minimize catastrophic consequences for everyday Americans due to unpreparedness.”

But Ellis questioned whether a consolidated federal firefighting agency like the U.S. Wildland Fire Service would have done anything to prevent or lessen the impacts of the Los Angeles fires.

In his experience, Ellis said the fire program in the United States is “pretty seamless” with different agencies not only working with each other but also collaborating with state and local partners to combat wildfires.

Under its current organizational structure, the Forest Service successfully suppressed around 98% of new ignitions on agency lands that it wants to immediately suppress, according to the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.

The remaining 2% of ignitions that become costly and destructive large fires are typically driven by extreme weather events, Ellis said. That was the case with the Los Angeles fires, which were intensified by strong, dry Santa Ana winds with gusts over 80 mph, he said.

A consolidated U.S. Wildland Fire Service “would not have prevented that fire,” Ellis said of the Los Angeles fires, adding, “We have a climate-driven catastrophic wildfire problem in this country.”

Would consolidating wildfire resources require Congressional approval?

Typically, under the federal budget process, the President submits a detailed budget proposal to Congress, which it reviews before drafting its own budget and voting on funding bills that allocate federal dollars to individual government agencies and programs.

But last month, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the U.S. Senate Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Committee, he doesn’t have a “conclusive answer yet” on whether Congress would have to act legislatively to create the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

“If we find that it is something that we think has deep merit but requires legislative action, we’ll certainly be working with you on that,” Burgum said. “If we think it’s something that we think deserves merit and we can execute it between (Agriculture Secretary) Brooke Rollins and I, moving forward — I mean, we’ll do it the way we can get the most efficiency.”

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) responded, “We’re all for coordination. We’re all for efficiency. But I think it’s the opinion of members of Congress that when you have an organization established in law, changing that organization requires a change in law.”

Merkley asked Burgum to “do the planning” and send Congress a reorganization plan if it plans to consolidate wildfire fighting into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

“What we don’t want is something done without due consideration that creates more problems than it solves,” Merkley said. “We don’t want to do something that breaks the Constitutional separation of powers. I guarantee you, that will end up in court.”

Neither the U.S. Forest Service nor the White House Press Office responded to questions from the Steamboat Pilot & Today about whether Congress would have to pass legislation for federal firefighting assets to be consolidated.

Interior Department Senior Public Affairs Specialist Alyse Sharpe also did not directly address the question, but instead pointed to an executive order entitled “Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response” that Trump signed June 12.

The executive order states that within 90 days, the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture shall “to the maximum degree practicable and consistent with applicable law, consolidate their wildland fire programs.”

In a speech at the Western Governors’ Association Conference earlier this week, Burgum said that the executive order allows the Interior Department to begin creating the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

“The (executive order) is directing (that) we create one unified command at the top. That’s going to be under Interior,” Burgum said. He will be creating an advisory board that will include local, state and federal officials to help guide the consolidation “with the idea that by next fire season, we’ll be ready.”

‘The public needs to pay attention’

Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado) is still looking into the concept for a U.S. Wildland Fire Service and what it could mean for wildfire response and resources, his office said in a statement.

Hickenlooper has opposed the Trump Administration’s mass firings of federal workers such as Forest Service employees, including “red card” holders qualified to work on wildfires, and cuts to federal programs.

While Ellis said that the proposal to consolidate federal firefighting resources into a single agency is “a wonderful method to create for the public an illusion of progress,” he worried it could “produce confusion, inefficiencies and demoralization.”

Even after the Trump Administration’s mass layoffs and voluntary resignation led thousands of employees to leave federal agencies, Ellis noted that the President’s budget proposes further cuts to Forest Service staffing and programs.

“If you line these things up there’s warning signs flashing about the whole future of the agency and the National Forest lands,” Ellis said. “This administration’s proposed budget telegraphs their intent. It does have to go through Congress, but it telegraphs their intent. Which the public needs to pay attention to.”