The Forest Service and other federal agencies missed the deadline of Sept. 10 to implement President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14308 mandating consolidation of federal firefighting into a single agency in the Department of Interior.
A week later, the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture issued orders directing establishment of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service to be implemented in January 2026 with the Interior Department leading the new “agency.”
The Interior Secretary’s order claims, “Unification of targeted administrative functions and consistent application of policy between the two departments will yield immediate and significant improvements to the national wildfire response system.”
According to the order, these wildfire-response improvements will be realized through a restructuring process that will “eliminate redundancy and misalignment.”
The joint orders fail to include specifics, and the prospect of improving upon the current three-decade firefighting track record — 98% wildfire containment at 100 acres or less — is slim to none.
Photo: Forest Service firefighters are silhouetted by the 2017 Boundary Fire on the Kaibab National Forest. Pursuant to executive and secretarial orders, wildland firefighting is being consolidated under the Interior Department.
