The act increases wildland firefighters’ special hourly base rates depending on an employee’s GS, or General Schedule, level. The increases include:
GS–1, 42 percent
GS–2, 39 percent
GS–3, 36 percent
GS–4, 33 percent
GS–5, 30 percent
GS–6, 27 percent
GS–7, 24 percent
GS–8, 21 percent
GS–9, 18 percent
GS–10, 15 percent
GS–11, 12 percent
GS–12, 9 percent
GS–13, 6 percent
GS–14, 3 percent
GS–15, 1.5 percent
It also requires firefighters to receive premium pay for instances when they’re deployed to wildfires. The daily pay is equal to 450% of one hour’s wages when they’re responding to an incident outside of their official duties or assigned to a separate fire camp.
The pay boost has been a source of anxiety for the nation’s wildland firefighting force not long after the Biden Administration approved a $20,000 retention bonus in 2021. The bonus was only supplemental and legislators intended to enact a permanent pay increase.
“I feel comforted by the fact that House Republicans included the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act in the House Interior Appropriations bill and that the Senate is there to match right alongside,” Jonathon Golden, a member of Grassroots, previously told WildfireToday. “My thought is that when we see a final Fiscal Year 2025 budget, we will also see some version of WFPPA that will make into law a higher pay for wildland firefighters.”
Lanny Flaherty was over 2,000 miles from home setting prescribed burns in Louisiana when he was fired from his Forest Service job.
The termination was immediate and did not include a severance package, Flaherty told WildfireToday. Despite being miles away from his Oregon home on official duty, Flaherty was told he’d have to find his own way home. It took his union fighting on his behalf for the USFS to temporarily rescind his termination so he could get home.
Flaherty was a range ecologist in Oregon’s Wallowa-Whitman National Forest whose primary duties were studying vegetation and fungi. But, like countless other USFS employees, he had wildfire-fighting secondary duties that made up around half of his job.
Credit: Lanny Flaherty
I pulled end-of-the-year earning and leave statements for the last few years and saw that I was spending around 40% to 50% of my hours on fire incidents,” Flaherty said. “That alone is thousands of man hours that aren’t going to be available the next time a fire pops up.”
Duncan said Flaherty’s experience was incredibly common across the Forest Service. Around 75% of the USFS probationary employees that the Trump Administration fired had secondary wildland fire duties, according to numbers Duncan obtained from the National Federation of Federal Employees’ Wildland Fire division.
“While ‘primary firefighters’ were exempt, the positions that were cut made some pretty huge contributions to operational wildland fire,” Duncan said. “For example, eastern national forests rely much more heavily on these collateral duty folks to do a lot of prescribed burning and initial attack of wildfires…There were people working the LA fires who, because it was the offseason, weren’t primary fire but were filling in on engines and crews.”
Both Duncan and Flaherty said the recent cuts would only strain firefighters further. Not only will the layoffs deprive firefighters of much-needed help, but firefighters have also since been asked to help pick up the duties of fired personnel, increasing an already heavy burden within the fire workforce.
“The remaining workforce becomes people charged with picking up trash at campgrounds or marking timber while we aren’t having fires,” Duncan said. “A lot of firefighters are concerned that they’re just going to be told to do even more with even less, have more of a burden, and maybe even held back from fire assignments to work on some of those other things, because some areas still do that.”
Despite the turmoil Flaherty’s firing caused, he said he’d still be willing to return to his job if an offer came his way. He still believes in the work he was doing and the importance of land stewardship, even if the current administration doesn’t believe in him or people like him. In the meantime, he hopes a tragedy doesn’t occur with understaffed fire crews.
“This is ultimately going to cost lives and endanger everybody that’s out there on the fire line,” Flaherty said.
Flaherty’s chance may come sooner than he expected. The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an independent federal court that focuses on government employee complaints, issued a stay order against the USDA on Wednesday. The Board ordered the reinstatement of every position terminated within the department since Feb. 13 to be reinstated for at least 45 days, on the grounds that USDA’s mass and indiscriminate termination was likely unlawful.
It’s unclear how the reinstatement will actually play out, and how many employees will return, according to Duncan.
“No one seems to know what the next steps are or how to re-hire people,” Duncan said. “In other words, nothing seems to have trickled down to the (Forest Service) or (Department of the Interior) regarding this and the process.”
If Flaherty’s job, and the thousands of other public land positions, are reinstated, the process may be as chaotic as the original firing, which doesn’t inspire confidence in the department’s employees and an already strained wildland firefighting force.
USDA was ordered to submit proof it complied with MSPB’s stay by March 10.
The freeze includes all federal agencies, including the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the United States Forest Service (USFS), and the United States Department of the Interior (DOI), triggering worries among the nation’s wildland firefighters as record-breaking fires burn Los Angeles and just months before peak wildfire season begins. Many wildland firefighters who recently accepted job offers took to the internet to ask whether the offer will now be revoked.
“As part of this freeze, no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law,” Trump’s order said. “This freeze applies to all executive departments and agencies regardless of their sources of operational and programmatic funding.”
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released a memorandum to each executive department and agency head moments after Trump’s order. The memorandum offers some insight into the exemptions of Trump’s order, namely an exemption of seasonal employees.
“Appointment of seasonal employees and short-term temporary employees necessary to meet traditionally recurring seasonal workloads, provided that the agency informs its OMB Resource Management Office in writing in advance of its hiring plans,” the memorandum said.
While some assumed the seasonal employee exemption covered wildland firefighters, confusion arose when USDA sent out its own memo a day later that said no exceptions applied to the department.
“At this time, there are no exceptions to the hiring freeze with respect to the Department of Agriculture (USDA),” the USDA memo obtained by WildfireToday said. “Accordingly, effective immediately, agencies and offices are not authorized to extend an offer of employment to any person. Persons to whom an offer of employment has been extended, but acceptance has not been received, shall be contacted immediately and be informed that the offer has been revoked.”
WildfireToday asked the USFS for clarity on whether wildland firefighter positions were exempt. The service referred us to the following statement from a USDA spokesperson:
“USDA is reviewing all the Executive Orders signed by President Trump and expects to share guidance on implementing them to agencies and mission areas as soon as possible.”
A DOI spokesperson told WildfireToday that it and the National Park Service are implementing Trump’s freeze across the federal civilian workforce. Officials are waiting for a report to be released by OMB and the newly-formed non-federal Department of Government Efficiancy (DOGE) within 90 days of Trump’s executive order to determine next steps.
This isn’t the first time a federal-wide hiring freeze enacted by Trump caused mass confusion for wildland firefighters. He ordered a similar freeze in 2017 after he took office.
“The (2017) exemption specifically allows the Forest Service to move forward with hiring wildland firefighting resources, such as individual firefighters and specialists,” reporting from the Flathead Beacon said. “Other positions that were exempt in the USDA decision include law enforcement and disaster preparedness-related personnel in multiple agencies, food inspectors and medical officers in the Food Safety and Inspection Service and cyber security personnel in multiple agencies.”
This is a developing situation. WildfireToday will share updated guidance once it is released by USDA officials.
A grueling fight that forced wildland firefighters in the United States to become armchair legislative experts just entered its fourth year, with a light at the end of the tunnel being closer than ever.
A $20,000 retention bonus enacted by the Biden Administration in 2021 has subsequently caused a spike in fear and panic for wildland firefighters every few months. The bonus was only supplemental, as legislators intended to enact a permanent pay increase.
Years later, that pay increase has yet to become a reality. Each federal budget or continuing resolution passed since, including the most recent push filled with “political turmoil,” has almost resulted in a massive pay cut to the force as legislators nearly failed to extend the $20,000 bonus.
Wildland firefighters may soon be able to “step off the anxiety merry-go-round,” as Jonathon Golden with Grassroots Wildland Firefighters nonprofit puts it, as a permanent solution nears final passage.
Wildland firefighters. Credit: USFS.
The supplemental pay increase was most recently included in Congress’ Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2024 and will remain in place until Congress passes a budget for Fiscal Year 2025, which they are now four months late on and counting.
Versions of the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act (WFPPA), which would solidify the pay increase and guarantee other compensation improvements, are included in both the House Interior Appropriations bill and Senate Interior Appropriations bill for 2025 with bipartisan support.
“I feel comforted by the fact that House Republicans included the WFPPA in the House Interior Appropriations bill and that the Senate is there to match right alongside,” said Golden, who is the legislative director for the nonprofit. “My thought is that when we see a final Fiscal Year 2025 budget, we will also see some version of WFPPA that will make into law a higher pay for wildland firefighters.”
Despite this, Golden sees the coming opportunity as the best shot wildland firefighters have of getting a livable wage. The United States Forest Service signaled a similar sentiment in a statement sent out on Dec. 31.
“There is strong bipartisan support in Congress to make this firefighter pay reform permanent,” the statement said. “Our team in Washington continues to engage with Congress as lawmakers consider a permanent solution. We are preparing for every possibility to ensure this critical reform is implemented as seamlessly as possible.”
“We’re closer, but we’re not there yet,” Golden told Wildfire Today.
“The scale … people have to see it to understand just how many acres burned across the state this summer,” ODF Deputy Director for Fire Operations Kyle Williams told KGW. “Just because the smoke wasn’t present in our more populated areas doesn’t mean that (wildfires) weren’t deeply impactful.”
Smoke over La Pine in central Oregon. Photo by Deschutes County Sheriff’s office.
The costs for wildland firefighting alone chokes out the state’s entire emergency budget. ODF is asking the state’s Emergency Board, which allocates additional funding outside of legislative sessions, for $40 million from its general fund, KGW reports. The problem is that the E-Board only has $43 million in its general fund for the remainder of the year, meaning if wildland firefighting gets priority, other emergency needs the state may face will be strained until the legislative sessions starts back up.
On top of that, ODF will probably need much more money this year as wildfires continue to burn. A recent Legislative Fiscal Office analysis found the department won’t be able to pay its debts by November, with an estimated shortfall of $54 million by January.
“I would like to think that future fire seasons won’t be quite at this scale, but I think the statistics tell me that’s probably not going to be accurate,” Williams told KGW. “The conditions we’ve got on the landscape are going to drive us to a place we haven’t been before.”
Climate change, overgrown forests, and people are the top causes for Oregon’s worsening wildfire seasons, according to an Oregon Forest Resources Institute report. The high burned acreage totals aren’t unprecedented; fire experts previously warned massive wildfires in the state were a disaster waiting to happen and part of a larger trend in the Western U.S. Even though the total number of yearly Oregon wildfires have remained steady over the past decade, the total amount of acres burned per year have increased dramatically.
Oregon Department of Forestry
“Factors contributing to this explosion of ‘megafires’ include overgrown forests and the effects of climate change, which have led to extreme weather, drought and insect infestations that weaken and kill trees, making forests more prone to fire damage,” the report said.
“The good news is there are many actions homeowners and landowners can take to reduce the fuels wildfires need to spread … These include clearing flammable vegetation and debris around homes, pruning or thinning trees, and using controlled burns to reduce dry brush and other fuels in forests, rangelands and grasslands adjacent to homes.”
President Joe Biden claimed his administration is working to raise the minimum wage of wildland firefighters to $29 an hour at a press conference Tuesday morning.
“What I’d like to do is…raise the pay of $29 an hour. I’d like to make that permanent for these firefighters,” Biden said at an Oval Office press conference on the ongoing wildfire response. “I look forward to this briefing from key members of my administration, who’ve been working like hell on this, and two frontline governors.”
Biden did not share details on how he’d raise the wage, and ended the press conference right after the statement.
The raise would be significant for the nation’s wildland firefighting force, the members of which usually hired at GS-3/4 with an average base hourly wage at $15.47 an hour.
A wildland firefighter pay raise, albeit not as substantial as Biden’s proposal, has recently neared reality after being rucked inside this year’s Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. The bill, which passed the House and was placed on the Senate’s calendar on Sept. 12, would boost wildland firefighter pay from 1.5% to 42%, with higher percentage increases going to workers lower on the pay scale, according to Boise State Public Radio.
Despite the lack of details, Biden’s statement stands in stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s recent threat. If re-elected president, Trump said he’d cut all federal wildfire aid from California if Gov. Gavin Newsom did not agree with his policies.
