US wildfires had mix of highs and lows nationwide in 2025, new report shows

The United States had far more wildfires, but far fewer acres burned, than normal in 2025, according to a newly released report.

The National Interagency Fire Center, the home of U.S. wildland fire planning and suppression efforts, released its annual national wildfire report on Friday, which shows just how abnormal 2025 was.

The reported number of wildfires nationwide was noticeably higher than the five and 10-year averages, according to the report. Nearly 77,850 wildfires burned throughout the nation in 2025, compared with the 5-year average of 61,680 and the 10-year average of 62,435.

Conversely, the high number of wildfires burned far under the normal amount of acres nationwide. Wildfires in 2025 burned 5,131,474 acres, below the 5-year average of 7.3 million burned acres and the 10-year average of 7.6 million burned acres.

Southern states, from Virginia to Texas, had just under half of the nation’s total wildfires at 37,088, by far the highest number of reported wildfires compared with any other region in the nation, according to the report. The largest wildfire of 2025 was Dragon Bravo in Arizona, burning 145,504 acres. The southern region also nearly had the nation’s most burned acres at 967,000, second only to the Alaska region with 1,006,000 burned acres, and had over half of the nation’s reported human-caused wildfires at 36,040.

Eastern states, from Maine to Missouri and Minnesota, had by far the highest increases in both reported wildfires and burned acres compared with every other region’s 10-year average. The region’s burned acre total of 241,000 acres was 159% higher than its 10-year average of burned acres, while its reported wildfire total of 15,367 was 50% higher than its 10-year average of reported wildfires.

Center officials processed an above-average number of requests for resources filed nationwide at over 660,000 requests, including critical supply orders. Requests for crew, overhead, and helicopter mobilizations were well above previous averages, while requests for air tankers, engines, and critical incident management team mobilizations fell below averages.

Click here to read the full report.

US wildfire smoke kills over 20K people every year, report finds

McKinley Fire Alaska Parks highway

Around 24,000 people die in the United States annually due to wildfire smoke, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday.

Researchers from Harvard and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai noticed that most previous smoke research either focused exclusively on smoke’s acute impacts on human health or focused on specific timeframes rather than long-term effects. They instead looked into the association between annual exposure to fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke, which contains carcinogenic compounds and heavy metals, and county-level mortality in over 3,000 counties across the U.S, in the study funded by the National Institute of Health.

They found that wildfire smoke was responsible for ~24,100 deaths every year, with no evidence of a “safe” threshold of wildfire smoke exposure. The researchers also found that people with neurological diseases, like dementia or Parkinson’s, experienced the greatest increase in mortality when exposed to wildfire smoke. People with circulatory system illnesses, endocrine diseases and cancers saw the next highest increases.

“For all studied outcomes, the exposure-response curves generally showed an increasing trend as exposure levels rose, especially at higher exposure levels,” the researchers said in the study. “In addition, greater effects of wildfire smoke PM2.5 were observed in communities with a higher percentage of the population under 65 years old, in more rural areas, and during lower summer and winter temperatures.”

Previous research released in September estimated that the U.S. could see an additional 46,000 deaths annually by 2050. The additional deaths are primarily attributed to climate change, which is making already fire-prone regions in the U.S. hotter and drier.

“Because of the mortality effects we uncover at low annual smoke concentrations, we project large mortality burdens not only in heavy smoke regions but also in populous regions with low smoke concentrations (e.g., the eastern US),” the researchers said in the study published in September. “Similarly, we estimate substantial mortality increases even in the low warming scenario because of projected increases in low-level annual smoke concentration.”

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Wildfire smoke will kill more people in US, but where is up for debate

FEMA wildfire official facing questions after claims of receiving priority payout for New Mexico wildfire

A senior FEMA official is facing questions after media published the claim he received wildfire relief payments from the fund he was administering for victims of a 2022 New Mexico fire.

According to the report in Source NM and NMPBS, Jay Mitchell is in charge of FEMA’s multi-billion-dollar fund to compensate victims of New Mexico’s 2022 Hermits Peak Fire, which remains New Mexico’s most destructive wildfire with 430 homes impacted in communities northwest of Las Vegas. The report claims he received a six-figure payout over the past year for damages the fire caused, despite the properties in question being over an hour’s drive from where the fire actually burned.

Documents produced by Source NM appear to show Mitchell was paid $266,000 for smoke and ash cleaning costs for his house and guest home in Angel Fire, New Mexico, a ski resort town over 40 miles north of where the fire burned. The same documents show that Mitchell’s wife, reportedly a licensed real estate broker selling property in Angel Fire, got more payments totaling over $250,000 for business-related losses she allegedly incurred during the fire.

Other homeowners in Mitchell’s neighborhood told Source NM that smoke from the Hermits Peak Fire did not cause any discoloration or damage to their homes or to those of anyone they knew.

The payouts to Mitchell were made as 74 people or families who lost their homes in the wildfire are still awaiting compensation nearly four years after the fire burned, according to recent estimates from the claims office reported by Source NM. Michell was placed in charge of the compensation fund approved by Congress after it was determined that the wildfire was caused by two botched prescribed burns overseen by the U.S. Forest Service.

Multiple New Mexico lawmakers have since called on Michell to resign after Source NM’s reporting was released, including senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, along with representatives Teresa Leger Fernández and Martin Zamora.

Two years ago, another FEMA director resigned amid criticism of the government’s mishandling of relief payments to victims of the same New Mexico wildfire.

Click here to read the full article.

‘Covering Wildfire’ toolkit released for journalists and other media professionals

Cold Fire

A group of Canadian researchers, wildfire practitioners, Indigenous Firekeepers, and journalists has created a free, comprehensive resource to strengthen wildfire reporting.

Simon Fraser University made the “Covering Wildfire” toolkit as part of its Mitigating Wildfire Initiative, which was created to prevent catastrophic wildfires by transforming how Canada works with fire, according to the initiative’s website. The initiative specifically seeks to change the overwhelming flow of funding from suppression toward prevention.

The toolkit focuses on seven specific pathways for how journalists and media outlets can change their coverage of wildfires to reflect the realities and challenges that the natural phenomenon poses, including covering wildfire as a year-round story, highlighting resilient solutions, and improving collaboration between the media and wildfire agencies.

“The toolkit is a collective, co-created offering from the 50 folks who gathered at the bootcamp for other journalists across the nation, aiming to support them in telling this critically important story,” university officials said on the institution’s website.

Mitigating Wildfire Initiative Director Yolanda Clatworthy first unveiled the toolkit in June at a workshop in Calgary, where she told Wildfire Today it had been well-received. Both fire professionals and journalists shared how helpful it would be for their workflows, as well as for increasing trust and responsiveness within their communities. The toolkit was also presented at an interactive session at the IAWF international Wildfire Summit in Calgary in October 2025, and it has begun to help agencies and journalists outside of Canada as well.

“Folks in San Francisco at Red Sky Summit were also asking about it and saying how helpful it would be in an American context as well — a testament to the expanded reach and how much co-created outputs are needed,” Clatworthy told Wildfire Today.

Click here to download and read the full toolkit.

More shooting on public lands will lead to more wildfires: study

The leading cause of wildfire ignitions on public lands in recent decades has been lightning, but new research shows humans may become the predominant cause of wildfires thanks to a recently enacted law allowing more recreational shooting.

Research published by Boise State University and the United States Department of Agriculture delved into fire reports for the Bureau of Land Management’s National Conservation Lands from 1992 to 2020 and found that 73% of fire ignitions were natural-caused, while human ignitions were only 27%. That is nearly the opposite of national trends, where human-caused ignitions account for 84% of all ignitions.

But one National Conservation Area, Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey in Idaho, was the opposite. This conservation area had 68% of its wildfire ignitions caused by humans. This public land also made up 25% of all ignitions on all of the Bureau’s National Conservation Lands between 1992 and 2020.

Total count of human (excluding military-related) and natural ignitions documented in each NCL unit between 1992 and 2020.
Total count of human (excluding military-related) and natural ignitions documented in each NCL unit between 1992 and 2020. MONE is the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey (MONE) National Conservation Area in Idaho, US.

The difference between Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey and other Bureau lands is that Morley Nelson has a year-round live-fire shooting area managed by the Idaho Army National Guard, meaning shooting directly contributes to the prevalence of fires on the public land.

All other public lands may soon go from having minimal human-caused ignitions to Morley Nelson’s numbers because of a recently enacted law. The Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act, signed into law in January 2025, requires the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to establish at least one shooting range in their respective districts, expand motorized access, and increase campground usage.

Boise State University Environment Researcher Meg Dolman told Wildfire Today that she believes the act would increase the risk of human-caused wildfires due to the increased recreational shooting, human presence, and general activity on public lands. But she said the increased risk could be offset through preventative measures.

“Our research emphasizes that further efforts are needed to reduce wildfire risk from recreational shooting, through improving educational messaging, or encouraging recreational shooters to carry fire suppression tools and be prepared to extinguish any fires that may result from their activities,” Dolman said. “Our paper also highlights the need for safe fire-proof bullets for use in firearms and shooting ranges, especially in arid, fire-prone areas like the sagebrush steppe. Ultimately, our research encourages public land agencies to address human-caused ignitions more proactively and as a matter of urgency, especially those caused by recreational shooting.”

Click here to read the full paper.

Dozens dead and hundreds of homes destroyed amid Chile wildfire outbreak

More than 500 firefighters are battling over two dozen wildfires throughout Chile with no end in sight as weather conditions worsen fire spread, according to National Forest Corporation officials.

Security Minister Luis Cordero on Monday said at least 19 people have died in the fires, while states of emergency and mass evacuations are in place in central and southern portions of the nation, according to CNN reporting. Thousands of residents sifted through the rubble that was once their homes on Monday morning.

National Forest Corporation officials on Monday said at least 25 wildfires are still burning throughout the country. Tankers and aircraft have been mobilized throughout the weekend. Minister of Agriculture Ignacia Fernández fires are expected to worsen due to forecast weather conditions.

“The situation in the region is worrying,” Fernández said in a press release on Monday. “The weather conditions today are going to be complicated and other fires could eventually break out … We will continue to reinforce calls for a complete halt to agricultural work during the hottest hours in those municipalities under a red alert. However, it is extremely important to appeal to the responsibility and awareness of each and every citizen to prevent new outbreaks of fire.”

Officials also floated possible curfews on Monday to maintain public order as officials begin recovery efforts.

“We are not ruling out any of the powers that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have to maintain public order and to assist in the region’s recovery,” Undersecretary of Defense Ricardo Montero said. “For now, our assessment is that it is not necessary, and we are using other forms of equipment, presence, and, especially, coordination among all the armed forces and the police.”

Officials were warning the country’s residents about the potential for widespread wildfires last Thursday as forecasters predicted temperatures near 100 degrees Fahrenheit, strong winds of up to 25 mph, and low relative humidity. Residents were advised to not use electrical tools or machinery outdoors, to not burn vegetation, and to not throw cigarette butts on the dry ground.

Also in South America, large wildfires have been ongoing in Argentine Patagonia since early January 2026, impacting vast areas of native forest and shrubland. According to the local authorities, the fires spread across the provinces of Chubut, Santa Cruz and Neuquén, burning over 15,000 hectares of land and prompting the evacuation of over 3,000 residents and tourists from affected areas.

This image (below), acquired on 11 January 2026 by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites, focuses on an active fire in the province of Chubut. Healthy vegetation appears in green, while burned areas are visible as dark brown and reddish patches. Bare soil is shown in cream tones and smoke plumes are visible drifting eastwards.

Argentina wildfires, January 2026. Credit: European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery

National 30-minute wildfire response law faces debate

US wildland fire agencies would be required to respond to wildfires within 30 minutes and deploy within three hours if the Wildfire Response and Preparedness Act is signed into law.

The mandated response time was described as a “commonsense” measure by Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany from Wisconsin, who is also the Chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, at the committee’s hearing on the act on Wednesday afternoon.

“Many would be shocked to learn that no such standardized response time exists across federal agencies right now,” Tiffany said. “Instead, decisions about initial attack are left up to subjective factors that vary across agencies, regions, and individuals. Aggressive initial attacks are critical to preventing fires from developing into large, uncontrollable blazes that spread devastation.”

United States Forest Service Deputy Chief John Crockett said the Service supports the intent of the law and shares the goal of improving federal response to wildfires as a witness at Wednesday’s hearing. He also said the Service plans to have 11,300 firefighters for the 2026 wildfire season, which some lawmakers worry would be extreme due to low amounts of snowpack across the West.

But the nation’s current wildland fire workforce isn’t strong enough to meet the new 30-minute response standard, according to wildland firefighter advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. The group said multiple systemic issues need to first be addressed before Congress sets sweeping response-time mandates.

“Response standards must be grounded in reality—and paired with investments in a sustainable wildfire workforce,” the group said in a social media post. “The biggest constraint in federal wildfire response today isn’t policy—it’s people. Chronic staffing shortages, high vacancy rates, and retention challenges already strain resources during peak fire season. Terrain, remoteness, detection delays, and aviation limitations further complicate rapid response, especially in remote federal lands.”

Click here to read the group’s full response to the proposed legislation.

US Wildland Fire Service launched, despite lack of funding and without majority of nation’s firefighting resources

The United States Department of the Interior on Monday officially announced the launch of the “U.S. Wildland Fire Service,” an effort by the department to unify the wildfire-fighting resources of numerous agencies.

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum first announced the department’s intent to establish the new service in September as a continuation of President Donald Trump’s executive order in June, which directed all agencies represented by the National Interagency Fire Center to enhance their wildland firefighting capabilities. The new Service will consolidate all department sub-agencies’ wildland firefighting forces, including those in the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Service already faces financial and legislative hurdles. A group of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers effectively blocked the service from being funded in a new appropriations bill package. The bills included $0 for the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, despite the Department requesting around $6.5 billion for the agency’s wildland fire operations. The lawmakers also specifically said they don’t agree with the administration’s consolidation efforts in a recent press release.

“The bill does not endorse the consolidation of federal wildland firefighting into one agency as proposed in President Trump’s budget request,” a press release from the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations’ Democratic members said. “Instead, it specifically provides funding to continue wildland firefighting using the longstanding practice of funding both the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to allow Congress to consider legislative proposals for such a major change.”

Monday’s announcement did not mention the funding discrepancy.

The new Service’s name is also a bit of a misnomer, as the vast majority of the nation’s wildland firefighting resources won’t be included in the Service. More than two-thirds of those resources are managed by the United States Forest Service, which will be excluded from the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. Lawmakers have officially signaled their desire for the Forest Service to eventually become part of the Wildland Fire Service, but such a consolidation would need an act of Congress.

Click here to read the Department of the Interior’s full order announcing the new Service’s establishment.

USFS to standardize post-fire recovery programs, scrutinize current projects

The USDA Forest Service plans to standardize post-fire recovery actions nationwide.

The Service will soon be launching a nationwide environmental assessment to analyze the effects of general post-fire recovery actions, issues, and alternatives to facilitate consistency, officials said in a press release on Thursday. The Service would then standardize its programs across the nation’s forests to allow for a more “rapid, efficient, and effective response” from local managers.

Officials said a review of the agency’s post-fire recovery programs was necessary due to the increasing severity and frequency of wildfires across the country, especially in Western states. It also aligns with executive orders issued by President Donald Trump, which focus on streamlining wildland fire response and increasing timber production through deregulation.

“Restoring forests after a wildfire is not something we can delay, especially when public safety is at stake,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said in a press release. “Post-fire recovery actions need to be immediate and comprehensive to protect the future of our forests and the people who depend on them.” 

The Service’s environmental analysis would specifically focus on the following issues:

  • Effects to wildlife and habitat, including threatened, endangered or sensitive species
  • Effects to waterways and soils resulting from fire suppression and response activities
  • Effects to public access, recreation, and visual quality through temporary closures during hazard treatment
  • Economic effects of post-fire timber salvage

“This effort is about resilience,” Chief Schultz said. “We’re not just recovering from a fire. We’re building landscapes that can withstand the next one.” 

Officials expect the assessment to be completed by April, with site-specific scoping, documentation, and decisions being issued on a project-by-project basis by local rangers. Members of the public can comment on the Service’s proposal through Jan. 26 at 11:59 p.m. EST. Click here to submit a comment on the proposal.

‘Wildland Fire Service’ consolidation effort stalled pending further study

Night operations on the Pine Gulch Fire in Colorado. Photo by Kyle Miller, Wyoming Hotshots, USFS firefighters hotshots

Congress just unveiled a new package of bills to fund some agencies and avert a full government shutdown at the end of January. The package includes a specific push back against the Trump administration’s attempt to consolidate the nation’s wildland fire resources.

The U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled plans in 2025 for the formation of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service in September, with the goal of having the Service operational by the end of January. The formation of the new Service followed an executive order issued by President Donald Trump demanding that the nation’s wildfire fighting forces be consolidated under a single agency.

Those efforts appear to have stalled after both Democratic and Republican lawmakers blocked that order and opted to maintain the current wildland firefighting structure in their new funding bills. The bill package continues funding allocations for wildland firefighting services to the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior’s individual agencies.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, in September, announced the “unification” of department sub-agencies’ wildland firefighting forces, including the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the U.S. Wildland Fire Service as part of the Wildland Fire Management Program.

But that unification did not include the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, which has more than two-thirds of the nation’s firefighting resources. Lawmakers said such a consequential change would need congressional scrutiny before it’s approved.

“The bill does not endorse the consolidation of federal wildland firefighting into one agency as proposed in President Trump’s budget request,” a press release from the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations’ Democratic members said. “Instead, it specifically provides funding to continue wildland firefighting using the longstanding practice of funding both the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to allow Congress to consider legislative proposals for such a major change.”

The Committee also directed Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to contract with an independent and non-partisan research organization to conduct a study to find out how feasible Trump’s proposed consolidation of wildland fire management operations is. The study would specifically focus on the effects on timber targets, cohesion between wildland fire management and hazardous fuel reduction programs, and how the new Service would differ from the National Interagency Fire Center.