Two U.S. senators are pushing to consolidate the nation’s wildland firefighting force into a single agency.
Republican Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana and Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California recently introduced a Senate bill that would create the “National Wildland Fire Service.” The bill directs the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior to reorganize federal wildland fire response nationwide, create a Director of the National Wildland Firefighting Service position, and develop a description for the new agency.
“The Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior (referred to in this Act as the ‘Secretaries’) shall jointly develop a plan to consolidate the authorities of the Secretaries relating to Federal wildland fire preparedness, suppression, and recovery efforts under an agency of the Department of the Interior, to be known as the ‘National Wildland Firefighting Service’,” the bill’s text reads.
Click here for the full text of the bill.
Sheehy and Padilla also recently introduced legislation to create a “National Wildfire Intelligence Center” modeled after the National Weather Service to coordinate fire response across federal and state institutions. The Senators called the current system “unnecessarily burdensome,” and said this bill would close gaps in federal response, as multiple agencies currently have their own fire management goals, firefighters, and jurisdictions.
“There is established in the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of the Interior a joint office, to be known as the ‘Wildfire Intelligence Center’…serving as the development and operational center for the comprehensive assessment and prediction of fires that occur in the wildland and fires that move into the built environment to provide decision support services to inform land and fuels management, community outreach and risk reduction, post-wildfire recovery and rehabilitation, and fire management,” the bill’s text read.
Sheehy, before becoming a senator, founded Bridger Aerospace, which operates the largest private Super Scooper fleet in the US, according to its website. He said the acts would streamline resources for wildland fire events.
“We can all agree that the federal government must do a better job protecting our people, property, public lands, and communities from wildfires, and this bill will go a long way in streamlining our wildland firefighting efforts and best leveraging all available resources to accomplish our shared mission,” Sheehy said. “As the only aerial firefighter in the Senate, I’m proud to be working with folks on both sides of the aisle to deliver commonsense solutions to more effectively fight the devastating threat of wildfires and protect the American people.”
The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters advocacy group applauded the move to establish a National Wildland Fire Service, saying the creation of such an agency has been its goal since it began.
“This new agency would consolidate all wildland fire management responsibilities from the five separate federal land management agencies (US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs) into a single, cohesive agency,” the advocacy group said. “The new agency should be a comprehensive wildland fire management agency directly under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and should be run by experienced wildland fire practitioners and managers. We are optimistic about the discussion this new legislation will generate, but there are few specifics on how it will be implemented.”
The group said the agency’s creation would streamline response to wildfire events, prioritize the safety of wildland firefighters, and efficiently provide cost-savings to American taxpayers.
The “National Wildland Fire Service” bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on Feb. 6. The “Wildfire Intelligence Center” bill was referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry also on Feb. 6.
Reporters could do 1000 of these stories and wouldn’t even scratch the surface. Federal firefighters have been abused by the agencies (USFS + BLM + NPS + BIA + FWS) for DECADES with make-believe job classifications, e.g. you’re not a wildland firefighter, you’re a range technician or a forestry aide or a fisheries technician ..
This ABC News story actually explains how it works:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fired-us-forest-service-national-park-service-workers/story?id=119004068
Federal fire employees need change, but this isn’t it!
Ok. Read the info on Sheehy and it sounds like McClintock calling Wildland Firefighters “unskilled labor.” What is wrong with these people. What kind of America are we really becoming here? Everyone on their own when disaster strikes or grease palm (bribe) some politico to do something? When the next fire affects Sheehy or McClintock, OF COURSE, the “unskilled labor” will get right on it! (sarc)
With the current state of congress, if it is truly a worthwhile alternative that should be studied as a method to streamline and provide more effective services then consider lobbying to bypass the legislative system and get POTUS to issue an EO. The bill just requires a STUDY, very similar to the study mandated by the “Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency” found at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/council-to-assess-the-federal-emergency-management-agency. The study and report the bill calls for would probably be completed under an EO before the bill was ever acted on through the legislative process. If the study and resulting report demonstrates it is a viable alternative, then and only then proceed to the next step. I see no issue in looking at alternatives to the way things are.
I need to provide a correction. What should be asked for in an EO, is a study and report like the EO I referred to for FEMA. Put 20 SMEs on a council with the agency heads as the co-chairs, and let a council study the issues and provide recommendations, just like the EO for FEMA requires. The current bill makes combining the agencies a foregone conclusion, not a study and report if it should it be accomplished and how best to accomplish. It is important that the members on the council have a voice and are heard so the comments I’ve read are addressed.
Geoff, it’s just not gonna happen. People have been talking about combining 5 fire agencies into one for at least 30 years that I know about. One issue you and others don’t mention is that there are different management mandates (AND FEDERAL LAWS) defining the purpose of each agency and they often do not match up.
Well, it’s interesting that it appears the study is limited to only the last four years, coincidentally with the Biden administration. Not even eight years to include the first Trump administration, sixteen to include Obama’s, or further back to include Bush’s and Hurricane Katrina, for example. So, other than a very small sample size, one would have to wonder how the report will be slanted to embarrass the Biden administration, and from there to justify eliminating FEMA.
Wouldn’t a more useful fix be to create job classifications of Firefighter rank titles to be used across all agencies? Including the long promised pay scale and designation as public safety members.
In theory, not a bad idea. But, as is often the case, the devil is in the details. But, we’ve already been given the keys to fix the whole wildland fire problem: distribute rakes, turn the valves, and use our sharpies. Simple!
The one reason I could see doing this is that agencies, especially the Interior, won’t allow their employees to help. I reached a certain point when I worked for the Interior, and was asked for lots, but my supervisor wouldn’t allow me to go because they felt Fire took money away from his pet projects. I do agree that there’s a lot more to this than it seems; but there has to be some bending at the very least with the different agencies to help out. Personally, the glut of money is going towards stacked management instead of worker bees.
We offered to pay Base 8 or backfill but were turned down more and more often. In some cases, the supervisor did not want to let the employee go because of priorities, but more often because the staff had been cut down so much that there was simply no one to backfill with. This was especially true of LE staff, who used to be a really important source of firefighters. And many line officers got to put firefighting experience in their job applications because of this type of work they did earlier in their careers, so that has been lost as well.
We need some reform and work on the fire organization, but I see lots of challenges to make this work. Wildland fire is intertwined with prescribed fire actions, and both involve working with and as part of land management organizations. It’s already hard to work together with the priorities of the different agency line officers but keeping fire out of the district or forest or area staff isn’t the answer. BLM, FS, NPS, USFWS all have programs to address both types of fire concerns.
Where would these staff sit? Some areas have one office but how about if there are multiple agencies in a geographical area. And there is a lot of movement between fire and resource staff, not to mention the feeder to IMTs…ugh, it’s a lot of think about.
I don’t see this administration thinking through this type of change.
The new Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Friday that her agency had invited Musk’s DOGE team with “open arms” and that layoffs “will be forthcoming.”
“Clearly, it’s a new day,” Rollins said at the White House. “I think the American people spoke on November 5th, that they believe that government was too big.”
When the new “Chief” invites the archenemy into her open arms….you know it’s bad
Beware of anything Sheehy purports to do for wildland fire. He did not divest from Bridger Aerospace. I fully expect his company to expand into contract crews and contract single resources to fill this new department, once the federal employee purge is complete. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.huffpost.com/entry/tim-sheehy-wildland-firefighters-federal-union_n_672633cfe4b0c69b94983ed8/amp
This has been tired a few times throughout the years. There is a lot of things that would need to happen for it to work. Those things take money. I don’t see the money being given it to make it happen.
Considering over the years how NIFC/NICC has been held up as a model of interagency cooperation and response, it is unclear what problems these bills are supposed to fix. But there are several problems that would have to be overcome in any case: for example, as shown by the ill-fated Fire Program Analysis (FPA) project from 20 years ago, the Forest Service has zero interest in surrendering its autonomous fire budget and resources so they can be melded with those of DOI. Still, times being what they are, they could be ordered to do so. But note this sentence: “The Senators called the current system “unnecessarily burdensome,” and said this bill would close gaps in federal response, as multiple agencies currently have their own fire management goals, firefighters, and jurisdictions.” Yes, fire management is, and should be, subordinate to unique agency missions and goals, and it is difficult to see how a unified fire program would operate in this environment without individual land management agency oversight. Fire use, or prescribed fire, would still require some kind of line officer approval, and involvement of natural and cultural resource staff, since I doubt the Fire Service could just show up and light things off. Indeed, I suspect one of the motivations of this Fire Service effort is to somehow get away from line officers who are reluctant to approve fuels projects for whatever reason, but I doubt their approval can be eliminated entirely, since the land management unit really is under their jurisdiction. So, I doubt this bill will improve suppression efforts very much, and issues impeding fuels projects may be resolved somewhat through improved coordination, for example, but I suspect fire suppression will still very much dominate the Fire Service mission, as is the current situation. Finally, given the management chaos seen so far in this administration, putting the pieces back together from who did not take the buyout, the roles the fired probationary employees were supposed to do, and who may get RIF’d in the future, sure seems it would be tough to extract the current fire organization from agencies and build a new one.
The USFS deploys personnel from Recreation, Tmber Management, Engineering and other departments to fight fires. Will this new agency have access to these personnel resources?
As a retired Chief of Calfire (5 counties)this makes a whole lot of sense. One issue would be the pay differential with state and local agencie.
I would think that it is a conflict of interest if Senator Sheehy owns a company that has Government Contracts and is advocating a change in a Firefighting Agency. We’re seeing a conflict of interest in DOGE with Musk having lucrative contracts with the Government while cutting wasteful spending. Trump wants to have a hiring freeze now on wildland firefighters and he wants to cut Federal Funding. Have wildland firefighters received the pay hike promised in the last administration? When the fire season heats up again will Trump blame lack of resources on Biden? This whole thing is a Circus!
Conflict of interest? Mr Sheehy’s outfit has done more in the last 10 yrs (approx) than many a Senator in the last 60 yrs as far as wildland fire goes. In that regard, that man deserves a pass than many a 535 could spell wildland fire
Read the book Mudslingers….a more practical “bro” than many on the Hill in the last 60
Signed you know who
oh YES I would trust anything Sheehy puts forth. He’ll nominate himself to be in charge.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-federal-workers-layoffs-doge-406752da1614755b8fabe9c94e0c71a8
So regardless of this bill, there won’t be a single person who would come to work while the felon is running rampant
The text of the bill isn’t even out….but, unless there is a section that addresses the pay issue, all that is happening is NOTHING
This will solve nothing
Why a new intelligence agency? What’s wrong with NIFC?
Private contracts to be had. The more I researched what little there is the more I saw big private money involved.
Very logical to eliminate the layers of waste in bureaucracy.
… and add Commerce to the current 5 agencies?
NOAA is under Commerce. By the way, this is the way the Alaska Fire Service, “sponsored” by BLM, works on federal lands in Alaska, with several agencies, and private entities owning lands. Yes, prescribed fire does get done (as well as prescribed natural fire, or whatever it is called these days).