California Faces Rough Fire Season as US Forest Service Work Becomes More Politicized

It has become a yearly tradition. At some point in the spring, before the chaos of fire season, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service sends staff a letter. In it, they share their goals and intentions for the next few months. For the public, it’s a window into the agency’s plans.

On the brink of fire season, the stakes are high for the state. Forecasters predict worse-than-normal conditions, especially in Northern California and the mountains. The Trump administration has a track record of politicizing fires, threatening to withhold aid, and taking aim at the state’s governor.

A well-functioning Forest Service — one able to balance firefighting and restoration — is crucial for Californians. Many residents live within or close to the Forest Service or other federal public land. Much of the state’s best-loved areas are also on or near these lands: Tahoe, Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada and the Coastal Ranges. Most of the state’s drinking water filters down from the forests. And all of the state’s air can be polluted from out-of-control fires.

But some fire experts worry this year’s letter from the chief signals a repeat of past mistakes, as it emphasizes putting fires out, instead of learning to better use and live with fire.

“It is critical that we suppress fires as swiftly as possible to minimize the amount of fireline exposure and be ready for the next ignition,” Chief Tom Schultz’s letter, released May 21, states. “This means employing direct attack tactics when and where feasible to minimize fire size and time to containment when safe and practicable to do so.”

Many people may find this comforting. Indeed, the agency has embraced full suppression throughout its history, especially when resources are drained. However, that embrace makes scientists and those who work for fire-resiliant forests concerned. They believe that what feels safe in the short term makes conditions more dangerous in the long term.

The all-fires-are-bad-all-the-time mindset largely got us into our current fire catastrophes, they say, because we decided to wage an unwinnable battle.

“[It] didn’t work,” said Brent Skaggs, a retired fire management officer who worked for USFS for 36 years. “We didn’t realize fire is a natural part of the ecosystem. So we decided to go to war against a natural cycle. And we’re getting beat up pretty bad about that.”

Going back to 10 a.m.? Probably not

Between the 1930s and 1970s, the Forest Service had a blanket policy stating that all fires — whether many miles away from the nearest road, burning just before the winter rains, or 10 feet away from the ranger station — should be extinguished before 10 a.m. the next day.

It was a one-size-fits-all policy — one that ignored the fact that some fires aren’t a threat to people and are helpful to the land they burn. Instead, all fires were demonized.

“I know that partisans on both sides will think that we’re going back to the 10 a.m. policy — universal suppression,” said Stephen Pyne, a renowned fire historian, emeritus professor at Arizona State University, and former firefighter. “The 10 a.m. policy had one thing. You had it out by 10 o’clock. There are no qualifications. There are no nuances, there are no exceptions. And that’s not what this letter is. This letter is full of wiggle room.”

Pyne sees important differences between full suppression and what Shultz wrote. While the letter does emphasize suppression, it is also full of nuance. It opens up by talking about the need to prioritize safety.

Putting firefighter safety first often means not directly engaging with the fire, but instead creating a zone of unburnable dirt in the path of the fire.

Schultz’s letter also allows for managed fire where possible. Managed fire is when a fire that starts naturally is allowed to burn, provided it doesn’t pose a threat to people or structures. Crews are assigned to keep an eye on it, so it can be put out if it does become dangerous.

The letter allows the forest service to continue using boundaries like rivers, ridgelines, roads or fire breaks to contain and manage fires. Many fire experts believe this is a crucial strategy for allowing more beneficial fires in the Western U.S. It can allow a naturally ignited wildfire to act as a prescribed fire, without having to do the paperwork necessary to light it. However, this strategy has increasingly been in the crosshairs of some politicians, including the governors of Montana and Idaho and Rep. Tom McClintock from California District 5.

Shultz’s letter also asks more Forest Service personnel to become qualified to fight fires. The voluntary buyouts and layoffs executed by DOGE earlier this year depleted the ranks of staff who can step in and help in a pinch. On June 6, the Forest Service said that people who resigned but have Red Cards — are qualified to be assigned to a fire — can assist this season even though they’re technically on administrative leave.

Even before the current administration, the Forest Service workforce was weakened by years of underpay and difficult working conditions. In California, many federal firefighters have gone to work for the state’s firefighting agency, CalFire, because the pay is far better.

Having fewer staff generally pushes agencies towards full suppression, and away from strategies like managed fire.

Craig Thomas, of the Fire Restoration Group, a nonprofit seeking to return fire to its pre-settlement ecological role, found plenty to like about the letter but was disappointed by its primary focus on suppression.

“That’s only half the story,” Thomas said. “We need to fight it, sure, but we need to put the same intensity into lighting it.”

Shultz is allowing for prescribed fires, but only through a very conservative approach. Many fire experts, including Thomas, Skaggs and Pyne, would like to see it be more lenient and science-based.

They see some current attitudes towards fire as being so overly cautious that it’s ultimately dangerous. It’s focusing on fire as an emergency instead of a force to live with. It’s like spending lots of money on emergency healthcare but not giving people vaccinations.

Kelly Martin, a retired chief of fire and aviation at Yosemite National Park, said with shifting political winds, she expected the agency to take a very aggressive suppression stance this summer. “We know that the use of good fire on the landscape and the use of [managed] wildfire … is now taking a backseat to the suppression intent this summer.”

But, she added, this shows a failure to learn from past mistakes.

“I think it sets us up for what basically becomes an untenable, unworkable situation this year because this is the same strategy that we’ve had for many, many decades,” Martin said.

“Wildfires just keep getting bigger and bigger and more dangerous.”

Good times at the U.S. Forest Service are gone. What happened?

The Forest Service was once seen as a gold-standard model government agency. Of course, it was relatively easy to be successful when it had fewer mandates than today and they were easier to achieve. There were more big trees to log for timber sales. Fires were easier to put out when the legacy of suppression, logging and human-caused climate change from burning gas and oil hadn’t yet caught up with America’s forests.

But that changed after 1960, when Congress told the agency to try to balance interests that inherently compete: recreation, logging, grazing, mining, wildlife, watersheds and wilderness protection.

“And so, it was basically torn apart. Criticized on all counts. There was no way it could succeed,” Pyne said.

After being hailed as a model agency, the Forest Service is increasingly pointed to as dysfunctional, balancing contradictory mandates and lacking a clear way to make decisions. There are those who think what’s needed for the USFS to right the ship is simply a return to the days of the 10 a.m. rule and a robust timber harvest. But neither are considered desirable or realistic by most experts.

While a mild fire removes duff, brush and small burnable fuels, it leaves large tree trunks. Logging removes the large stuff and leaves the small.

“Logging is not a solution to fire,” Pyne said. “Logging and fire do opposite things.”

Yet, President Trump has conflated declining timber sales with increased fire risk. In March, he issued an executive order requesting the expansion of timber harvests, and the agency responded in May with an outline of how it will try to meet the order’s demands.

Fires that burn forests and fires that burn cities are different

If wildfires during the past decade have been bad, fires that have destroyed towns and neighborhoods have been even worse.

Pyne said this has led to a fresh demonization of fire, particularly in the wake of the L.A. Fires. He sees the public confusing urban conflagrations that burn blocks of houses with wildland fires that burn in undeveloped lands.

“It’s a confusion that advances certain partisan interests,” Pyne said. “You get people alarmed. ‘We’re in the midst of an emergency! Our cities, Los Angeles, for heaven’s sake, are burning up. We’ve got to get rid of all the checks and balances. We’re going to clear out all the fuel that’s a threat.’”

This can lead to a bait-and-switch misdirection, especially by people who yearn for increased timber sales. However, Pyne said, “the primary way to protect these communities is to harden them.”

Pyne said if he were writing the chief’s letter, he would make it clear that we have an urban fire problem that needs to be addressed by urban fire services.

Not addressing this difference opens up the agency to even more criticism, especially if other towns burn this season.

“As the fire seasons have gotten more intense and everything connected with federal agencies has gotten more political and polarized, they’ve had to try to anticipate and clarify what they can do, hope to do, and to assuage a lot of different conflicting groups,” Pyne said. Many of these groups — whether politicians, business interests or conservationists — don’t want to compromise over their goals.

“And the agency is expected to somehow achieve that.”