Trump to merge wildland firefighting forces, despite warning of chaos

Donald Trump has ordered the US government to consolidate its wildland firefighting force into a single program, despite warnings from former federal officials that it could be costly and increase the risk of catastrophic blazes in the middle of peak wildfire season.

The order aims to centralize firefighting efforts, which are now split among five agencies and two cabinet departments. Trump’s proposed budget for next year calls for the creation of a new Federal Wildland Fire Service under the US interior department.

That would mean shifting thousands of personnel from the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service – where most federal firefighters now work – with fire season already under way. The administration has not disclosed how much money the change could cost or save.

In his order, Trump cited the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January as highlighting a need for a quicker response to wildfires.

“Wildfires threaten every region, yet many local government entities continue to disregard commonsense preventive measures,” the order said. The order also directed the defense secretary to prioritize the sale of excess aircraft and aircraft parts to support wildfire mitigation and response, according to the White House.

The Trump administration in its first months temporarily cut off money for wildfire prevention work and reduced the ranks of federal government firefighters through layoffs and retirement.

The order makes no mention of climate change, which Trump has downplayed even as global heating helps stoke bigger and more destructive wildfires that churn out massive amounts of harmful pollution.

More than 65,000 wildfires across the US burned almost 9m acres (3.6m hectares) last year.

Organizations representing firefighters and former forest service officials say it would be costly to restructure firefighting efforts and cause major disruptions in the middle of fire season.

A group that includes several former forest service chiefs said in a recent letter to lawmakers that consolidation of firefighting work could “actually increase the likelihood of more large catastrophic fires, putting more communities, firefighters and resources at risk”.

Another destructive fire season is expected this year, driven by above-normal temperatures for most of the country, according to federal officials.

A prior proposal to merge the forest service and the interior department to improve firefighting was found to have significant drawbacks by the Congressional Research Service in a 2008 report.

But the idea more recently got bipartisan support, with the California senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat, and the Montana senator Tim Sheehy, a Republican, sponsoring legislation that is similar to Trump’s plan. Before his election last year, Sheehy founded an aerial firefighting company that relies heavily on federal contracts.

The move follows a separate action last month, when the Trump administration rolled back environmental safeguards on future logging projects on more than half of US national forests.

The emergency designation covers 176,000 sq miles (455,000 sq kilometers) of terrain primarily in the west but also in the south, around the Great Lakes and in New England.

Most of those forests are considered to have high wildfire risk, and many are in decline because of insects and disease.

The Associated Press contributed reporting