Author: Hunter Bassler

A new report from a collective of national science academies across Europe calls for collective action to face increasingly disastrous wildfires in the region.

The report was recently published by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, or EASAC, and estimates that nearly 20% of Southern Europe will experience extreme fire danger every two years by the end of the century. Researchers argue that a unified European integrated fire management system, emphasizing landscape wildland fire governance, is the region’s only way forward.

“Current EU wildfire policies and funding mechanisms primarily emphasise emergency responses to wildfire prevention, limiting their effectiveness in addressing the root causes of wildfire risk,” the report said. “EU wildfire risk management is hampered by the lack of a targeted, cohesive policy framework. Instead, wildfire risk is managed indirectly, disconnectedly, and fragmentarily through sectoral policies such as the EU Forest Strategy 2030, the Biodiversity Strategy, and the Climate Strategy. These strategies often mention wildfires as a secondary concern rather than addressing them directly.”

The European region’s wildfire risk is expected to double over the next 70 years, driven by climate change, urban sprawl, and land-use changes, according to the report. Because of this, researchers said policymakers have to act now.

Researchers delivered three urgent and key messages to wildfire managers and legislative leaders, including prioritizing the implementation of climate change mitigation and land-use policies, incorporating wildfire risk into biodiversity and tree planting initiatives, and enhancing public health and education on wildfire risk. The report culminated in eight policy options, including:

• Investing in integrated wildfire risk reduction
• Implementing nature-based solutions
• Embrace the role of fire
• Invest in education and communication for wildfire awareness
• Invest in landscape management to reduce vulnerability
• Harmonise sectoral policies
• Promote compact urban development
• Encourage sustainable private land management

“Resources have been disproportionately allocated to fire suppression over
prevention,” the report said. “Currently, most resources are funnelled into emergency responses, with only a small fraction dedicated to planning and prevention, creating a significant imbalance.”

Click here to read the full report.

As the U.S. moves towards peak fire season, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has signed a memo signaling the Department of Agriculture’s approach to wildfire response under the Trump administration.

The memo – signed on Tuesday 20 May – directs the Forest Service to take several actions over the next 30 days, including policy changes for when the nation’s fire preparedness level is high.

At Preparedness Level 3 and above, Rollins directed USFS Chief Tom Schultz to “prioritize and redeploy the non-fire workforce” to support wildfire response. A Preparedness Level 3 is issued when the potential for wildland fires is normal for the time of year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, meaning it’s likely non-fire personnel will be deployed in 2025.

“This will include a necessary adjustment to the agency’s other program work,” Rollins’ memo said. “Exercise all available authorities, consistent with prior direction, to ensure the agency is using every tool and authority available to meet the Nation’s wildfire response needs.”

Rollins also told Schultz to identify the impact of “voluntary” departures on the firefighting and fire support workforce, and to remedy critical vacancies to ensure the proper resources are available. The directive was made just months after the department was forced to hire back all 6,000 USDA workers the Trump administration fired on Feb. 13.

The mass firing included thousands of federal land employees, around 75% of whom had secondary wildland fire duties, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters Vice President Riva Duncan, who obtained the numbers from the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Wildland Fire division.

It’s unclear how many of those workers returned to their jobs after the firing.

READ MORE: USDA hires back all 6,000 fired workers from past month, including public land employees

Rollins also signed a more general wildland firefighting memo with Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on Tuesday, stating the nation’s wildland firefighters will have all necessary resources and support during 2025’s peak wildfire season.

That memo, addressed to top personnel at the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said their leadership would be essential to protecting people during the already above normal wildfire year.

“The scope and complexity of today’s wildfires require unity,” the memo said. “Success demands the seamless collaboration of Federal, State, Tribal, and local agencies, along with community partners to maximize resources; enhance effectiveness; and ensure swift, coordinated responses. Together, we will prevent countless tragedies and protect the lands that support our way of life.”

A decades-long arrangement that shares firefighting resources between Australia, United States and Canada is under threat from increasingly overlapping fire seasons.

The two regions’ wildfire seasons historically peaked at opposite points of the year, making the partnership a no-brainer. Lengthening fire seasons in both regions, thanks to climate change, is placing more constraints on the resource-sharing partnership and shortening pre-season preparation windows.

A new report from researchers in Australia, Germany, and Switzerland used data from the Canadian Fire Weather Index and computed season length statistics to estimate how much the two seasons’ wildfire seasons will overlap over the next decades. The researchers found the overlap in western North America and eastern Australia has increased annually for generations, and the overlap’s increase is expected to quicken.

“We find that the overlap is projected to increase by ∼4 to ∼29 days annually by 2050,” the report said. “Our analysis shows that the length of fire weather season overlap between eastern Australia and western North America has increased by approximately one day per year since 1979.”

The overlap between the two regions was most consistent during the end of the fire weather season in western North America and the beginning of the fire weather season in eastern Australia. Specifically, the years with greatest overlap were seen when the fire weather season in eastern Australia was longer than average, while high overlap still happened during times of average fire weather days in western North America.

Researchers were also concerned that Fire Weather Index values, or measurements of major drivers of fire weather like high temperature, low humidity, and wind speed, were also higher during years of greater overlap, heightening the risk of extreme fires.

“We argue that the changes in risks to firefighting cooperation come not only from a general increase in fire weather season overlap, but also from the increased probability of extreme fires,” the report said. “An increased probability of extreme fires … implies possible changes in the frequency of disasters that require an emergency response, for example, with an exchange of personnel as experienced in 2019–20 or 2023.”

Click here to read the full report.

Less than halfway into the year, numerous regions in the northern hemisphere have already exceeded their average yearly burned areas.

Around 74,000 acres (nearly 30,000 hectares) have already burned in the United Kingdom since the beginning of 2025, the most acres burned in a year since record keeping began in 2012, according to data from the Global Wildfire Information System. Other nations, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Ireland, have also seen more acres burned this year than their 2012-2024 burned area average.

 “These figures paint a concerning picture about the growing incident rate of wildfires in the UK,” a spokesperson from the UK’s National Fire Chiefs Council said in a press release. “Responding to wildfires requires a lot of resource and often over long periods of time, which puts pressure on other fire and rescue service activities.”

Greece, which saw its highest number of annual burned acres in 2023 at 418,089 acres (169,195 hectares), is preparing for a “troubling” wildfire season in 2025 by mobilizing its largest-ever firefighting force.

The nation’s Fire Brigade now has more than 18,000 permanent and seasonal firefighters, compared with its previous largest brigade at 15,500 in 2022. The Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection also added 270 firefighting vehicles to its fleet, reaching a total of 3,700.

“Our collective goal is to reduce the number of fire outbreaks, swiftly contain those that occur, and adopt a holistic approach to large-scale fires,” Greece’s Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, Giannis Kefalogiannis told the Greek City Times. “Climate change requires our unwavering attention and preparedness.”

Other European countries which usually see very active wildfire seasons are off to slow starts, with relatively mild amount of burned hectares since the year’s beginning, including:

• Italy has only had 4,970 hectares burn this year compared to their 151,000 hectare average.
• Spain has had 15,837 hectares burn this year compared to the 151,000 hectare average.
• Portugal has had 6,234 of its 113,000 average.
• France has had 17,000 out of its 44,000 average.

Other nations are facing severe firefighting shortages heading into peak season. India is reportedly facing a firefighting deficit of around 1.5 million firefighters compared with global standards, according to reporting from the Indian Express.

Japan, which saw its largest wildfire in over 30 years in February, is also facing a significant shortage of volunteer firefighters. The nation’s numbers have fallen from nearly 2 million in 1956 to 746,681 in 2024, a 60% reduction, according to the Japan news site Nippon.

As aerial firefighting continues to grow as an essential component of wildfire response in the United States, planners and policy makers must ensure that existing airport and air traffic control infrastructure can continue to provide safe and efficient services.

Researchers from George Mason University in Virginia broke down the current state of the nation’s aerial firefighting force.  They looked at a range of data on the use of Very Large and Large Air Tankers (VLAT / LATs) during the 2024 fire season, helping policy-makers and aircraft planning authorities to make future projections of use.

The United States Forest Service’s contracted 34 VLATs and LAT are aging, according to the report. The service’s oldest aircraft, the C-130s, are 57 years old since the date of manufacture while the newest aircraft, RJ85A, is 25 years old.

“Unlike commercial airliners, which benefit from large-scale manufacturing, the niche market for specifically designed aerial firefighting aircraft makes it difficult to achieve economies of scale, leading to high per-unit costs,” the report said. “Barring government subsidies
or changes in the economics of aerial firefighting, a clean-sheet design of VLAT/LAT is unlikely.”

A total of 11,219 retardant drops and reposition flights were performed over the course of the year. There were as many as 157 retardant drop flights in a single day across the fleet.

“Flights operated on 88% of the days with an average of 35 flights per day and a maximum of 200 flights per day,” the report said. “The number of flights per aircraft across the fleet was not uniform (average 288 flights,
max 465 flights).”

The nation’s airports have also played an integral role in aerial firefighting, according to the report. More than 200 airports had VLAT and LAT departures over the course of 2024, but just 14 airports supported 50% of the departures. Redmond Airport in Oregon supported the most VLATs and LATs, with 6.4% of total flights.

Only two military airports assisted in VLAT and LAT departures, the rest of which were publicly owned airports that were part of the National Plan for Integrated Airports.

“Notably, in 2024, there were airports used east of the Rocky Mountains that have traditionally not supported aerial fire-fighting operations: Maine, Louisiana, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and South Carolina,” the report said.

Click here for the full report.

The State of Colorado on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration over its AmeriCorps funding cuts, which the state argues will have a direct impact on its wildfire mitigation programs, education support, and mental health resources.

The administration announced Friday evening that it was “immediately” terminating nearly $400 million in grant funding for the agency, also known as the Corporation for National and Community Service. The cuts will reportedly impact numerous programs aimed at reducing wildfire risk in Colorado, including thinning programs and wildland firefighter training.

The cuts will shutter more than 1,000 AmeriCorps programs and terminate 32,000 AmeriCorps jobs, according to America’s Service Commissions. The funding cuts would specifically end the service of nearly 300 AmeriCorps jobs and close 200 sites across Colorado, the state said in a press release on Tuesday.

AmeriCorps programs in Colorado have reportedly removed over 25,000 hazard trees across the state and have thinned over 3,000 acres to reduce wildfire risks. Every year, over 100 fully trained wildland firefighters and over 350 certified chainsaw operators graduate through the agency’s programs.

Colorado is one of 25 states suing the Trump administration for the AmeriCorps cuts. ASC called the “sudden termination” of the grants illegal, saying the program’s priorities are established and protected by the Serve America Act and President Trump does not have the authority to terminate grants approved by Congress.

Colorado’s wildfire forecast for 2025 said up to 6,000 wildfires could ignite, burning about 150,000 acres, with southwest parts of the state seeing elevated risk due to drought and anticipated hot and dry weather.

“This decision will have devastating effects on communities across our state, impacting our ability to support students, provide families food and housing supports, protect against forest fires, and lift up our neighbors,” Lt. Governor Dianne Primavera said in the press release. “Cutting AmeriCorps undermines our ability to meet local needs and erases a pipeline of passionate, skilled individuals ready to lead in every sector. We believe these actions are not only reckless but immeasurably harmful, and we will continue to consider every approach to support the power of national service in our state and across the country.”

Mid-Missouri communities are ripe for an LA-style wildfire disaster, and experts have rung the alarm bells for years. Communities near the Lake of the Ozarks, in particular, have a higher chance of wildfires igniting than nearly every other community in the nation, and the likelihood is only expected to increase in the years to come.

Ground zero for severe urban wildfire concerns in Missouri is Lebanon. The city’s wildfire likelihood is higher than 84% of communities in the nation, and 99% higher than other communities in Missouri, according to the US Forest Service’s “Wildfire Risk to Communities” dataset.

The cause is, in part, due to the region’s woody encroachment of eastern red cedar and other non-fire-tolerant vegetation, driven by a more-than-century-long absence of fire on Missouri’s landscape. The fire suppression regime, however, is slowly being reversed throughout the state. A Prescribed Burn Association movement is working to reintroduce “good” fire to Missouri through prescribed low-intensity fires.

Federal and state agencies largely can’t burn in the state because of the wide-sweeping privatization of land. Around 93% of Missouri’s 44.6 million acres is privately owned, meaning officials have to convince landowners that fire is both good and necessary on their land before a prescribed fire can be set.

That convincing is done on the neighborhood level by Prescribed Burn Associations, or PBAs, in the state overseen by the Missouri Prescribed Fire Council. The most consequential of these associations is the Niangua Basin Prescribed Burn Association, which oversees Missouri’s most wildfire-prone counties of Camden, Dallas, Hickory, and Laclede.

“It’s become an organization of learning and neighbors helping neighbors,” Lance Dunbar, who runs the PBA, said. “The PBAs were the genesis of the Missouri Department of Conservation to help organize prescribed burning. They’re now in almost every county in the state.”

Click here to read the full article.