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The USDA recently announced monumental changes to the U.S. Forest Service, including moving its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and a massive restructuring of the agency.
Part of this restructuring includes the closure of over 50 research facilities and all of its regional offices across the country. Facilities in at least 31 states will be impacted.
Unfortunately, this overhaul alarmingly coincides with scientists’ predictions of an especially fierce wildfire season, during which we rely on the U.S. Forest Service to protect us.
The Forest Service has long worked to manage over 193 million acres of American grasslands and forests. A major part of this management has included building and deploying wildfire prediction and monitoring systems.
Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained that “without robust science, staffing, expertise, and resources, as well as fair pay for wildland firefighters, the job of tackling worsening wildfire seasons will be much harder — and that could put people in greater danger.”
Julian Reyes, who serves as the UCS chief of staff, echoed Cleetus and also told Fast Company that “there are a lot of tools and data that underlie what firefighters are using when they battle wildfires … the dismantling of that part of the Forest Service will affect firefighting capabilities.”
The shuttering of the Forest Service’s firefighting capabilities comes as the federal government’s National Interagency Fire Center warned that this fire season is already above-average in terms of the number of fires.
The NIFC released a report on April 1, noting that the number of fires the U.S. has experienced in 2026 is 168% above the average. The same report also found that within the first three months of 2026, wildfires within the U.S. have burned more than 231% of the acres when compared to a 10-year average of the same three-month span.
As our planet continues to overheat and water resources become more scarce, it is critical that firefighters are given the tools and resources necessary for them to do their jobs and protect us.
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