The United States Department of Agriculture recently announced $23 million in grants supporting timber production in President Donald Trump’s effort to “unleash domestic production” of the nation’s natural resources.
The aim of the USDA’s grants is reportedly to transport “hazardous fuels” from national forests to processing facilities, supporting timber production, according to the department. A department spokesperson told WildfireToday the effort would specifically be targeting “low-value” wood in the protected forests, like dead trees, fallen branches, and dense undergrowth.
“Eligible material considered hazardous fuels may include logs, roundwood, chips, biomass and other byproducts from authorized existing projects transported to facilities for use in manufacturing wood products and/or wood energy/services,” USDA said in an emailed statement.
News of the grants was released a month after USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced her cooperation with Trump’s “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production Executive Order, which cleared the way for millions of national forest acres to be logged.
Rollins, through a memo sent in April, listed over 112 million acres of National Forest Service land under an “Emergency Situation Determination,” over half of all Forest Service land. The designation allows the service to take immediate action in the designated acreage, including salvage of dead or dying trees, commercial harvesting of trees infected with insects or disease, and harvesting of trees deemed “hazardous” due to their closer proximity to roads or trails.
“The United States has an abundance of timber resources that are more than adequate to meet our domestic timber production needs, but heavy-handed federal policies have prevented full utilization of these resources and made us reliant on foreign producers,” Rollins said in a memo in April. “It is vital that we reverse these policies and increase domestic timber production to protect our national and economic security. We can manage our forests to better provide domestic timber supply, create jobs and prosperity, reduce wildfire disasters, improve fish and wildlife habitats, and decrease costs of construction and energy.”
The Forest Service is accepting applications for hazardous fuel removal through June 20. Information about upcoming webinars will reportedly be available soon on the Forest Service Timber Transportation website.
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.”
Posted by Defence Australia, @DeptDefence, December, 2019.
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.”
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.
Erickson Air-Cranes. October 2021 in Greece. Photo by Dimitris Klagos.
“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.
This is not a reflection about who or what to blame. But blame was the tagline I was watching on TV within the first 24 hours of the Palisades and Eaton fires that wiped out swathes of communities in southern California. This is my account of what I saw and my contemplation about what comes next.
I needed to see this urban conflagration for myself. The fires were so outside my 40 years of wildland fire experience there was no rational part of my brain to reconcile what I was witnessing.
I went to bed Jan. 7 and woke up the next day to a request from California to neighboring states for help. The call for fire engines went out far and wide as an Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request – a national disaster-relief compact that allows states to share resources during emergencies or disasters. Could it be possible that our little White Bird Fire Department (population 100) could be part of this effort? I was repeating over and over, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go. The morning of Jan. 9, I found myself loading my summertime fire gear in the dead of a snowy winter in Idaho and heading south for our two day trip to Los Angeles.
After I retired in 2019 from a 35-year career working for the US Forest Service and National Park Service I found myself volunteering for many opportunities to give back to my community and the larger wildland fire community nationally and internationally. These opportunities allow me to see things differently. I’m no longer a fire chief or a member of an incident management team; I’m no longer a supervisor. In LA, I was happy to be serving as a firefighter, as I had done in 1984 when I was humble, curious and excited for the journey ahead. We left the frigid winter of central Idaho and after two days of traveling, slowly emerged into the envelope of the warm ocean breeze along the Pacific Coast Highway. I see now why so many people are attracted to the ocean and the temperate climate. Many millions of people choose to live in LA, even with the deadly Santa Ana winds always lurking in the background. No amount of human intervention will tame the Santa Anas.
This LA assignment brought my career full circle. I remember the epiphany I had at the Grand Canyon when I was flown by helicopter to the North Rim for a wildfire response. Sleeping in the rocks, dead tired after a seven-day wilderness fire experience, I knew at that moment every day from then on would be dedicated to working as a wildland firefighter. My younger self could never have imagined my older self-responding on an engine to a wildfire in LA, suppressing flare ups behind multi-million-dollar homes, helping people recover something – anything – that was recognizable of their past lives. The extreme contrast of my first fires in the wilderness of Grand Canyon National Park and the urban conflagration of LA could not be greater. I continue to remind myself that I had, and am still having, an amazing career serving the American public, and I’m extremely proud to have been part of a national response.
During the long trip from deep-winter Idaho to summer-like conditions in Malibu, I spent a lot of time being mindful about what I was getting into: tens of thousands of homes gone, lives lost, and billions of dollars of loss that surely would take years of recovery. Our travel route took us through the heart of LA in our oversized engine in gripping traffic. As we were given the wave to pass through the roadblock on the Pacific Coast Highway, it was as if everything became quiet and the anxiety of driving in heavy traffic was gone. It was game time. There was no one on this popular highway, just our five engines in perfect spacing. Our taskforce rumbled toward the first visual of the devastation. When people tell you the scene was unlike anything anyone has ever experienced, it’s true. My first impression was how could so many buildings for miles along the Pacific Coast Highway be gone, nothing but rubble – ash, concrete and metal – large, commercial buildings just gone. How do so many buildings built literally on the ocean coast go up in flames? Truly unbelievable.
Our fire engine was assigned a very specific area to suppress hotspots and open flames. We got to know our area quite well and got to know where small spot fires could threaten containment. The physical geography of this area was my first revelation about what we were witnessing. The area was densely populated. Homes lined both sides of steep canyons; some homes were built further up the slope with incredible views of the ocean. I soon discovered why these neighborhoods were very desirable places to live.
Idaho Taskforce #4 patrolling the burned area near homes for hotspots and taking suppression action to ensure no reignition. Photo by Kelly Martin
I spent the better part of my fire career working and living in Yosemite National Park and on incident management teams, but Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles were new ground for me. I felt like everything was novel again. Our first assignment was along the eastern boundary of the Palisades fire. Our mission was to keep the fire from jumping the canyon and igniting highly volatile vegetation that could reignite the eastern spread and threaten more homes and lives. I felt grateful the most severe Santa Ana winds had passed, but we all felt the heavy weight of protecting multi-million-dollar homes from any further damage.
The next 14 days we covered a lot of ground throughout the Pacific Palisades area and just to the east of the fire’s edge to ensure no reignition. I was struck most by the sheer devastation, block after block of leveled buildings, but occasionally I would see a house still standing and I could not help but study these houses up close. Had firefighters been there? What was the construction of the house? How old was the house? How and why did particular homes survive? The heroic efforts of individual engine companies is likely one of the untold stories that will come out over time. For CAL-FIRE, LA City and LA County and surrounding fire departments that were called into to assist, I can’t help but try to put myself on their engines with the firefighters who did their very best – as they had been trained to do – to save life and property, watching home after home, and business after business, fall.
I saw first-hand concrete bank buildings that were but shells. How does a concrete building in the middle of town on flat terrain just disappear? My curiosity began to shift to try to understand the many factors that contributed to this devastation. Weeks later, at home, I was still processing what I saw and the people we met and helped.
The first glimpse of what was to come; major buildings on both sides of the Pacific Coast Highway were destroyed. Photo by Kelly Martin
My experiences in LA will forever be part of my fire career: Homes reduced to ashes with Christmas decorations on their hedges and fences; miles and miles of ash, concrete rubble and twisted metal; devastated homes and buildings along the pacific coast washing into the ocean; remaining homes that did not burn that were saved by owners or firefighters and home hardening construction. Amid such destruction and devastation of life and property I looked for color among the chaos. I found small comfort in emerging new flowers, just two weeks after Jan. 7.
LA experienced a great boom after the Second World War. Houses and small lots were the first indication to me that the building boom after 1945 likely did not consider the possibility that whole communities could be destroyed by fire. Communities continued to expand into the wild, untamed fire territory. Building continued and the population surged from 3.5 million to more than 18 million by the 21st century. Combine the population growth with few if any builders or homeowners who understood home hardening or Firewise™ concepts, and the lack of building codes. Community planning 70 years ago was very different than it is today, and the number of communities still in the path of future wildfires is staggering. Devastating loss of life and property will happen again. Closely packed housing units, vegetation hedges 15 to 20 feet tall between homes, home development in steep canyons, and narrow roads – it’s clear how this catastrophic urban conflagration developed.
Kelly Martin was IAWF President in 2024. Martin retired as chief of fire and aviation, Yosemite National Park, National Park Service, Pacific West Region, in 2019.
She began her federal career as a GS-3 with the Apostle Island National Lakeshore in 1984 while attending college and worked her way up through the ranks during her 34-year career. Martin also served on the Presidential Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. She is the past chair of two National Wildfire Coordinating Group programs: Fire Environment Committee and the National Fire Management Leadership (M-582) course. Martin is a mentor and coach for the national and international Women in Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) program. She now serves as a volunteer firefighter and trainer for White Bird Fire Department in Idaho and started a fire consulting business in 2024.
Red skies in August, longer fire seasons and checking air quality before taking my toddler to the park. This has become the new norm in the western United States as wildfires become more frequent, larger and more catastrophic.
To help prevent catastrophic fires, the U.S. Forest Service issued a 10-year strategy in 2022 that includes scaling up the use of controlled burns and other techniques to remove excess plant growth and dry, dead materials that fuel wildfires.
However, the Forest Service’s wildfire management activities have been thrown into turmoil in 2025 with funding cuts and disruptions and uncertainty from the federal government.
The planet just saw its hottest year on record. If spring and summer 2025 are also dry and hot, conditions could be prime for severe fires again.
More severe fires harm forest recovery and people
Today’s severe wildfires have been pushing societies, emergency response systems and forests beyond what they have evolved to handle.
In some cases, fires burned so hot and deep into the soil that the forests are not growing back.
While many species are adapted to survive low-level fires, severe blazes can damage the seeds and cones needed for forests to regrow. My team has seen this trend outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, where four years after the Cameron Peak fire, forests have still not come back the way ecologists would expect them to under past, less severe fires. Returning to a strategy of fire suppression − or trying to “go toe-to-toe with every fire” − will make these cases more common.
Parts of Cameron Peak, burned in a severe fire in 2020, still showed little evidence of recovery in 2024. Efforts have been underway to try to replant parts of the burned areas by hand. Bella Oleksy/University of Colorado
Proactive wildfire management can help reduce the risk to forests and property.
But managing forests well requires knowing how forests are changing, where trees are dying and where undergrowth has built up and increased fire hazards. And, for federal lands, these are some of the jobs that are being targeted by the Trump administration.
Some of the Forest Service staff who were fired or put in limbo by the Trump administration are those who do research or collect and communicate critical data about forests and fire risk. Other fired staff provided support so crews could clear flammable debris and carry out fuel treatments such as prescribed burns, thinning forests and building fire breaks.
Losing people in these roles is like firing all primary care doctors and leaving only EMTs. Both are clearly needed. As many people know from emergency room bills, preventing emergencies is less costly than dealing with the damage later.
But private − unregulated − forest management looks a lot different than managing forests to prevent destructive fires.
Logging, depending on the practice, can involve clear-cutting trees and other techniques that compromise soils. Exposing a forest’s soils and dead vegetation to more sunlight also dries them out, which can increase fire risk in the near term.
Forest-thinning operations involve carefully removing young trees and brush that could easily burn, with a goal of creating conditions less likely to send fire into the crowns of trees. AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez
In general, logging that focuses on extracting the highest-value trees leaves thinner trees that are more vulnerable to fires. A study in the Pacific Northwest found that replanting logged land with the same age and size of trees can lead to more severe fires in the future.
Research and data are essential
For many people in the western U.S., these risks hit close to home.
I’ve seen neighborhoods burn and friends and family displaced, and I have contended with regular air quality warnings and red flag days signaling a high fire risk. I’ve also seen beloved landscapes, such as those on Cameron Peak, transform when conifers that once made up the forest have not regrown.
Recovery has been slow on Cameron Peak after a severe fire in 2020. This photo was taken in 2024. Bella Oleksy/University of Colorado
My scientific research group and collaborations with other scientists have been helping to identify cost-effective solutions. That includes which fuel-treatment methods are most effective, which types of forests and conditions they work best in and how often they are needed. We’re also planning research projects to better understand which forests are at greatest risk of not recovering after fires.
This sort of research is what robust, cost-effective land management is based on.
When careful, evidence-based forest management is replaced with a heavy emphasis on suppressing every fire or clear-cutting forests, I worry that human lives, property and economies, as well as the natural legacy of public lands left to every American, are at risk.
More carbon is stored in boreal forests than any other type of forest, but that’s changing with increasingly frequent and severe wildfires.
More than four years after a wildfire burned more than ten times the annual mean of land in Sweden, a burnt boreal forest’s soil has yet to recover, a group of researchers recently found. Vegetation within the slow-growing forests had shown no signs of recovery, in part due to decomposition and carbon releases, or soil respiration, in the forest’s soil being significantly impacted by high-intensity fire.
“As forest floor respiration is tightly coupled to tree root activity, it is likely to take many more years before it reaches the levels observed at an unburnt control stand,” the researchers said in their recently published Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Journal paper.
Forest burnt by 2018 Wildfires in Sweden. Credit: Moralist – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The researchers affirmed that a decline in carbon releases from soil may sound like a positive change in the context of global, greenhouse gas-driven climate change, but the fact misses the forest for the trees. In reality, a lack of soil respiration means fewer trees and other vegetation can grow, turning a once carbon-sink forest into a long-term carbon emitter.
Which trees were logged after the fire also played a large role in the forest’s recovery, the researchers said. The logging of living trees after low-severity fire led to “immediate and significant” decreases in soil respiration, while the salvage-logging of dead trees after high-severity fire significantly slowed the regrowth of understory vegetation.
“Our results highlight the significant and persistent changes to forest floor carbon fluxes due to fire and choice of post-fire management strategy,” the paper said. “Future work is needed to investigate the interaction effect between fire severity and salvage-logging and to more closely examine the effects of different site preparation methods on post-fire soil carbon fluxes and vegetation recovery in the boreal context.”
