Federal Policy Turmoil Threatens California's Wildfire Prevention Efforts

When the politics of Sacramento oppose the politics of Washington, California is able to insulate itself. The state’s environmental laws, agencies and funding streams allow it — to a certain extent — to set its own agenda.

For example, California can set its own clean car targets, clean water standards and goals for prescribed burning. In — or more literally on — about half of the state, that’s not the case because the federal government owns it.

Here, on this land, federal policies apply.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is the biggest landowner, holding 43% of all federal land within California’s borders. Next is the Bureau of Land Management, with 32%. The National Park Service controls 16%. The state of California, comparatively, holds just 3% of the state’s landmass, so those who care about California’s public lands and about limiting explosive wildfires also care about federal policy.

And yet policy on federal public lands is currently in chaos. Firings, funding freezes, emails that demand employees list five things they accomplished during the week and high-profile resignations have caused upheaval and bewilderment for the people entrusted to care for public lands.

Current and former federal and state employees told KQED they were concerned about delayed fire safety projects, canceled training for fire responders, slow response times to fires, and depleted ranks of firefighters and firefighting support staff. The trickle-down effects could mean communities are left at a higher fire risk of wildfire while public lands are neglected and ill-managed.

“When we manage large fires, about half the positions are actually suppression,” said Dan Munsey, San Bernardino County’s fire chief, referring to firefighters who directly engage with the fires.

The other half, he said, are support positions — fire modelers, map makers, logistics. Many positions have been cut.

“When you reduce positions in the Forest Service and other federal agencies, it’ll very likely have a direct impact,” Munsey said.

Wildland firefighters are concerned about travel restrictions announced last week that could mean delays if a serious fire erupted and a call was issued for aid. The emailed guidance, reviewed by KQED, stipulated that even travel related to national security, public safety and immigration enforcement had to be approved by the Department of the Interior.

Map by Matthew Green/KQED

Riva Duncan, a longtime Forest Service employee who is now spokesperson for the nonprofit advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, expressed doubt that agency heads would allow firefighter travel to be delayed but said the confusion was understandable and that direction from the federal government was not clear.

Some wildfire safety projects around the state have been put on hold. Sometimes, the projects, which already take so long that the community the project was meant to protect, get burned before it gets completed, as did the town of Grizzly Flats in the 2021 Caldor Fire.

Contractors working on a plan to prepare communities for wildfire in Shasta County, as well as a project assessing wildfire hazards in the wildland-urban interface in Plumas County, have been told to stop work until USDA Community Wildfire Defense grants are unfrozen.

Ben Vizzachero, who was fired from his job as a Los Padres National Forest biologist, was contributing work to wildfire protection plans for Ohai, Santa Barbara, Montecito and Monterey. He’s handed the work to a colleague, who already has a full plate.

Agencies such as the National Weather Service also assist in fire response. An annual training for incident meteorologists, who interpret how forecasted weather conditions will impact fire and responding crews, was canceled last week with short notice.

“[W]e have no choice but to cancel,” said the email from a director at the NWS, which KQED reviewed, owing to travel and spending restrictions and short staffing. “[We] understand and appreciate that many [incident meteorologists] were still willing to make it work, but we cannot ask them to do that given the risks and impacts to their home offices.”

Some wildfire prevention work is proceeding. Last week, a public-private partnership in the works for months that will bring 400 miles of fire breaks to the area between Oregon and California was announced. It’s funded by the American Relief Act, which passed in December. And several planned prescribed burns have gone forward. KQED spoke to one firefighter from the site of a pile burn in Yosemite.

In a letter dated Feb. 26, Congressional representatives from California and Oregon wrote to Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and President Donald Trump expressing concern over the firings and funding freezes, noting the “loss of skilled employees, many of whom possess specialized training in modern wildfire prevention techniques, will have lasting effects on the U.S. Forest Service’s ability to respond to the growing threat of wildfires.”

“It is particularly concerning that many of those laid off were probationary employees who were actively involved in these critical projects,” the letter said. “Their departure, along with the broader staff reductions, leaves the agency dangerously understaffed as we head into another fire season.”

The ranks among federal firefighters were thin, even before the recent layoffs. Munsey testified before Congress in 2024 that he does not feel the Forest Service has been a good public safety partner. Over 80% of land within county boundaries is federally owned, but his department responds to a majority of calls that occur.

“That represents 8,550 calls last year,” Munsey told KQED. “This is taking away from our local government and subsidizing the federal system.”

Last year, he decided not to sign the annual local mutual aid agreement with the Forest Service. He said he will continue to respond to emergency calls.

“[When we sign], we’re saying we’re going to send you resources to support you on your land and, theoretically, they’re supposed to send us resources to support us on our land. But it’s been very imbalanced,” Munsey said. “Local government has given resources to the federal government at a much higher scale. That costs our local citizens over $14 million of local tax funds to mitigate these emergencies on federal land.”

Last year, 13 of the 25 Forest Service fire stations in the county were not staffed, he said. The Forest Service has lost almost half its permanent employees since 2020.

“The message to [the federal government] is, ‘We’re not going to sign a reciprocal agreement until you staff all your fire stations,’” Munsey said. “When you staff your fire stations, then I’ll sign it.”

He’s worried fire response this season will be significantly impacted if some of the lost positions don’t return.

“Now, it’s really unbalanced because you won’t staff your positions that are required to keep our community safe,” Munsey said, adding that some representatives have told him they think the positions will return. “I’m hopeful this is just a reset, but it’s really hard to tell where it’s going.”

For years, federal wildland firefighters have called for improved pay and working conditions. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, boosted pay for wildland firefighters by about $20,000 a year, a bump that is still in effect. However, the raise will sunset on March 14 unless Congress extends it. Representatives have also introduced a flurry of legislation designed to fix forests and federal firefighter pay.

One proposed bill with bipartisan support is the creation of a single federal wildfire service. This could be good, said Duncan of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. But the bill doesn’t have a lot of substance. One thing it does specify is that the director of the service would be a political appointee.

“We strongly oppose that,” Duncan said. “We don’t think that those kinds of positions should be a political appointee. They should be an experienced fire manager coming from in the ranks, who is being put in the job for their skills and experience, not for their political party.”

However, Duncan thinks the time is right for a discussion about how things should be done differently. Land management agencies, she points out, are now nearly overwhelmed with fire.

“It’s become such a huge part of their budgets,” she said. “It was never supposed to be that way. And I believe other resource areas have suffered because of that.”

Amanda Monthei, a former hotshot wildland firefighter who is a writer and host of the Life with Fire podcast, has mixed feelings about the proposal.

“My first instinct is that this is a great idea. Then my secondary instinct is, like, what are they trying to pull?” she said.

Monthei wondered if the creation of a new agency was an excuse to corral money for firefighters, who are always politically popular, and then cut money for managing trees, wildlife and water.

“There’s been talk for a long time about either turning over federal lands to states, and there are some states pushing for that because they feel like they can do it better,” Duncan said. “And then there’s also discussion about privatization. Not going to state agencies but to the highest bidder.”

The author of the chapter about the Department of the Interior in Project 2025, a document outlining a far-right vision for remaking the federal government, was William Perry Pendley. He was never confirmed but served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during Trump’s first administration. In past statements, he argued that the federal government shouldn’t even own land, and instead, the resources on public land should be available to companies to extract for profit. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during the campaign but now is executing a lot of what the document outlined.

“There are some people worried that this firing of all these employees in the land management agencies is the first step to then cripple the agencies so they can go, ‘See? They can’t do it. We told you,’” Duncan said.

Hunters, anglers and conservation groups oppose public land privatization.

Last week, Randy Moore, the former Forest Service chief and an employee of the agency for 45 years, announced his resignation. The following day, Tom Shultz was announced as the new chief. At the Idaho Forest Group, Shultz was vice president of resources and government affairs, where he led timber procurement, and he previously served as director of the Idaho Department of Public Lands.

On March 1, Trump signed an executive order calling for the “immediate expansion of American timber production.”