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Despite the Trump administration’s official declaration hiring sufficient wild firefighters, documents obtained by Propublica show internal concerns among senior officials as more than a million acres burn in 10 states.
A month ago, Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins announced that the Trump administration has done a historically good job preparing the country for the summer fire season. “We are on track and we may be able to achieve our firefighting goals and our employment goals,” Rollins said in his address to the Western Governor. Rollins oversees the wild fire workforce of the US Forest Service, a subagency of the Department of Agriculture. In her remarks, Rollins said the administration exempts firefighters from a federal employment freeze, and she claims the administration is overgrading its predecessor.
Since then, the Forest Service’s claims have become even more optimistic. Currently, the agency claims it has reached 99% of its fire employment employment target.
However, internal data obtained by Propublica shows that Rollins characterization is dangerously misleading. She omitted the wave of resignation from the agency this spring, and omitted the vacancy of many senior management positions. Government efficiency, voluntary postponed resignations and layoffs due to early retirement have severely hindered wild firefighting. More than 4,500 Forest Service firefighters (even 27%) were vacant as of July 17, according to internal national data that has not been reported previously. Data-savvy Forest Service employees say it comes from managers who enter staffing information into the computer tools used to create organizational charts. Employees said the data may contain inaccuracies in certain forests, but broadly reflects the agency’s desired level of staffing. Employees said data showing “active” unskilled positions were “latest and latest from last week.”
The Agriculture Department has challenged the assessment, but the figures are supported by anecdote accounts from Wildland firefighters in New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, California and Wyoming. A recent survey by California Forest Service Fire Managers found that 26% of engine captain positions and 42% of engineer positions were vacant. California’s veteran Forest Service firefighters characterized the Trump administration’s current estimate of the size of the firefighter workforce as “severely inaccurate.”
Last week, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz distributed a letter to senior officials at the agency highlighting the tragic moments. “As expected, the 2025 fire year has proven to be extremely challenging,” Schultz wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Propublica. “We know that the demand for resources outweighs availability,” Schultz immediately instructed staff to adopt complete restraint — stepping out the fire as quickly as possible, rather than burning them for landscape management — and acknowledging that there is a lack of resources needed to pursue such a proactive strategy. He wrote that all the options were on the table. This includes instructing talented employees to fight a fire and asking recently departed employees to return to work with fire qualifications.
When asked about the discrepancies between Schultz’s memo about fire staff at the Forest Service and Rollins’ official statement, an agency spokesperson said Schultz refers to employees who can step up agency responses “because fire activity increases,” but Rollins refers only to full-time firefighters. “The Forest Service remains fully equipped and ready to protect people and communities from wildfires,” the spokesman said, “Many individuals who have left the agency through their retirement or voluntary resignation are still active wildland fire-certified and available to support fire response operations.”
The federal government employs thousands of wild firefighters, but the exact numbers are unclear. Across the internal divisions, overseen by Secretary Doug Burgham, there are around 5,800 wild firefighters in the four agencies affected by the cut. An employee at Colorado’s national parks, threatened by Wildfire, said “we had a severe understaffing during the Biden administration in most respects, but now it’s far worse than ever.”
But the Forest Service is the largest employer of wild firefighters and has long used gymnastic arithmetic to draw optimistic pictures of its staffing. Last summer, Propublica reported that the Forest Service under President Joe Biden had exaggerated its capabilities. Robert Koon, a former Forest Service official who co-authored an assessment of agency HR needs between 2009 and 2011, recently said that the practice of selectively counting firefighters has dated back several years ago. “What the public needs to understand is that it’s a very small amount of what you need every summer,” he said. Riva Duncan, retired Forest Service fire chief and vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a labor advocacy group, said the personnel are constant complaints for ground managers. “We have a completely human-free engine,” said Duncan, who has been active in Wildland fire service this summer. “There are vacant positions in management.”
However, this fire season is different from the past few years. Officials from the previous administration publicly acknowledged the dangers presented by the departure of experienced wild firefighters. The Trump administration has taken a different approach. They claim that they solved the problem while getting worse. When asked about staff cuts, White House deputy press president Anna Kelly wrote:
In March, Congress ultimately codified permanent raises for federal wild firefighters through the spending process. This has been sought by its supporters for many years. In his June remarks, Rollins believes in the President: “Thanks to our Forest Service firefighters for their selfless service, President Trump has forever increased the wages of federal wild firefighters.”
But in February, the Trump administration fired about 700 employees supporting wild fire operations, ranging from talent managers to ecologists and trail coward workers. These employees own what is known as the red card. Many were then rehired, but the administration urged Forest Service employees to accept postponed resignations and early retirements.
Last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order overseeing the Forest Service and the Department of Interior, combining firefighting. At this point, it is unclear what form of the restructuring will take, but many forest department firefighters are anticipating further staffing cuts. A spokesman for the Ministry of Interior wrote, “We are taking steps to unify the federal wildfire program to streamline bureaucracy.”
Management officials allege that employees, primarily assigned to the Wildland Fire, have been exempt from offers to resign this spring. However, there were around 1,600 red cards out of the 4,000 forest department employees who accepted postponed resignations and early retirements, according to another internal dataset obtained by Propublica. (A spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture wrote that the actual number was 1,400, adding that 85 people have “decided to return to the season.”
Even these numbers do not explain all the lost institutional knowledge. The departure included a meteorologist who provided long-range predictions, allowing firefighters to determine where to deploy their crew. One of the meteorologists left was Charles Maxwell. For more than 20 years he interpreted weather models predicting summer monsoons at his interagency office in Southwest Coordination Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Thunderstorms can burn wildfires with lightning and wind, and extinguish them with heavy rain. Recently, according to Maxwell, monsoons have become increasingly less reliable and understanding their nuances is challenging. Maxwell said he had already planned to retire next year. However, he also said, “I’m interested in the extent of the confusion, the potential degradation of the service and what will happen to my work.”
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Maxwell pointed out that his work was covered by knowledgeable paint from out of state. However, another firefighter who was working on the flames in New Mexico said Maxwell’s understanding of the monsoon was overlooked. “We have not commented on HR issues,” a spokesman for the interior department, which oversees the interagency office where Maxwell worked.
The monsoon season is here now, bringing fatal flash floods along the old burn scars of Ruidoso, New Mexico, and distributing sporadic rain in the state’s Gira National Forest.
It’s shaped to be a serious fire season. On Monday, federal firefighters reported 86 new fires in the west. By Tuesday there were another 105. And there has already been criticism of the federal government’s response. The Arizona governor and members of the legislature are calling for an investigation into the handling of Park Service’s flames that levelled the historic lodge in North Rim, Grand Canyon. Last month, Rollins admitted that “the fire doesn’t know who the Republicans or Democrats, or what side of the aisle you’re on.” At least this is true.
Ellis Shimani provided data analysis.
