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Over the last three months, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE have cut 10 percent of the total workforce at the U.S. Forest Service, the federal agency responsible for managing 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands, including fighting wildfires.
About 75 percent of the agency's staff are trained in wildland firefighting. With the current cuts plus more layoffs anticipated, and an agency reorganization on the way, there will be fewer firefighters across the country to reduce the risk and intensity of wildfires, not to mention respond when fires inevitably ignite.
Laura Dee, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Colorado at Boulder studies the impact and aftermath of wildfires. In an article published by The Conversation, she writes about the effectiveness of prescribed burns for maintaining healthy forests and reducing the severity of wildfires. This type of preventative work requires knowledge of how forests are changing over time, including where trees are dying, and where undergrowth has built up and increased fire hazards. "When careful, evidence-based forest management is replaced with a heavy emphasis on suppressing every fire or clear-cutting forests, I worry that human lives, property, and economies, as well as the natural legacy of public lands left to every American, are at risk,” Dee writes.
Interior to slash environmental reviews for energy projects
On Wednesday, the Interior department said it would fast-track environmental reviews and approvals for drilling and mining projects on public lands. The department is arguing that President Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency allows for radically reducing environmental reviews that are required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Under the new process proposed by Interior, reviews that typically take a year to complete would be finished in 14 days, and more complicated environmental impact statements that usually take two years or more would be completed in 28 days.
House Natural Resources Committee ranking member Rep. Jared Huffman said in a statement, “These guys are dreaming. Even if you could do this with federal permits, which you can’t, and even if you could overcome waves of litigation that would ensue, you’re still going to have to navigate state and other permitting. Show me the energy developer that is going to feel confident going forward under this laughable approach.”
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This draft plan confirms what we expected: the Trump administration sees public lands as nothing more than numbers on a balance sheet or products to be sold off and exploited. It resembles a business plan from a desperate CEO, not a framework to steward public lands for the benefit of all Americans.”
