HELENA — Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, directing the consolidation of federal wildland firefighting agencies. On Wednesday, representatives from the newly united U.S. Wildland Fire Service gave the Montana Environmental Quality Council an update on their plans for the 2026 fire season and beyond.
(Watch the video to hear more from the Wildland Fire Service.)
The Wildland Fire Service has taken over responsibility for all firefighting under the U.S. Department of the Interior. Previously, that was spread out among four agencies: the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“With unification, we can set a single policy and operate that as a single decision-making authority that gets to be a little bit faster and more efficient,” said Brad Shoemaker, a fuels and post-fire specialist with USWFS.
Lawmakers pressed for more details on how – and whether – the new agency can meet its goals.
“Frankly, everybody has a lot of serious questions about this new U.S. Wildland Fire Service,” said Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, who was himself a longtime wildland firefighter.
USWFS representatives said they expected fire personnel to remain roughly the same, though they are still in the process of getting the agency staffed. However, they said consolidation could reduce duplication in administrative roles and allow them to overcome differences among agencies on issues like distributing resources.
“We believe that that will be a quicker response to all our fires, getting that one critical resource, that hotshot crew to that one fire to be able to address it, instead of having to go through layers of FMOs [fire management officers], dispatchers and/or duty officers,” said Aaron Thompson, USWFS’ Northern Rockies Geographic Area fire chief.
Shoemaker said one noticeable area where the different policies of each agency surfaced was in planning fuels mitigation projects. He said each agency prioritized slightly different goals, so they might not be on the same page about how important a project is. He said USWFS will be able to put together a single fire risk map for use in planning.
“We can look at dragging those fuels projects across ownership lines in a more strategic way that protects communities, infrastructure and the public, instead of having to play to the various fuels risk assessments to make sure that something was going to be of value for all four agencies,” Shoemaker said.
One major federal firefighting agency has not been combined with the Wildland Fire Service yet: the U.S. Forest Service, which is under the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of the Interior. Troy Heithecker, the USFS acting regional forester for the Northern Region, said this year’s budget calls for studying the possibility of further consolidation. In the meantime, he said the two departments are already working on improving cooperation where they can.
“We'll stay focused on maintaining the strong coordination that already exists across these programs to ensure safe and effective response, as we head into what will undoubtedly be an active fire season,” said Heithecker.
