How the U.S. Wildfire Threat Is Growing Amid Climate and Policy Shifts | Shale Magazine

The United States, like many other parts of the world, has experienced more severe wildfires in recent years due to hotter summers and more extreme drought in certain regions. With the ongoing threat of wildfires, the U.S. government will need to invest in prevention and mitigation activities, while utilities will have to prepare their infrastructure to respond to these types of emergencies. 

Lack of Preparation

Concerns among the scientific community have increased over the United States’ perceived lack of preparedness for wildfires and other severe weather events. As the U.S. faces more hot, dry summers, the prevalence of wildfires is expected to increase across various parts of the country, and some states are more prepared than others to tackle them. Meanwhile, recent actions by the Trump administration may have made the U.S. more ill-prepared to control these fires. 

In recent months, President Trump has made significant cuts to both budgets and staff across the agencies that manage around 640 million acres of U.S. public land. This is expected to have a knock-on effect on wildfire mitigation and management in the coming months. This could be made worse by other Trump administration moves, such as decreasing funding and cutting roles in the areas of climate science and weather forecasting, meaning states may miss the early warning signs of fires. 

Over 65,000 wildfires across the country burned through almost 9 million acres last year. Meanwhile, this year, the U.S. experienced an exceptionally warm spring following a dry winter and saw several heatwaves in the summer months. Climate forecasters, therefore, expect that there may be more forest fires this year than in the last two years, particularly in California, Montana, and Texas. 

Merging Wildfire Forces

In June, President Trump ordered the government to consolidate its wildland firefighting force into a single agency, ignoring warnings from officials that the action would be expensive and could increase the risk of more severe wildfires during the peak season. 

Currently, federal firefighters are divided into five agencies and two cabinet departments. However, the Trump administration has proposed the creation of a new Federal Wildland Fire Service under the U.S. Interior Department from 2026. This would see the transfer of thousands of workers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service to the new agency, during the peak wildfire season. 

In his executive order, Trump addressed the January wildfires in Los Angeles. The President said, “Wildfires threaten every region, yet many local government entities continue to disregard commonsense preventive measures.” 

However, experts worry that rushing the move could shift the focus away from fire mitigation and management efforts and lead firefighters to be less prepared to tackle unexpected events. A previous proposal to merge the forest service was abandoned following a 2008 Congressional Research Service report that deemed the move to have significant drawbacks. 

Earlier this year, the Trump administration temporarily cut federal funds for wildfire prevention work and reduced the federal firefighter workforce through layoffs and retirements, which could exacerbate the challenges. 

Meanwhile, in May, the Trump administration watered down environmental safeguards on future logging projects across over half of U.S. national forests. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill also cuts funding for environmental reviews for certain projects, which is expected to spur deforestation in national and old-growth forests. It also cuts funding for the Landscape Scale Restoration Program. 

Put bluntly, “If this turns out to be a major fire year, it’s going to be a shit show,” according to Hugh Safford, a fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis. Meanwhile, several federal firefighters who were asked by the newspaper The Guardian whether they were prepared for the upcoming wildfire season said they were not. 

Washington and California

In Western Washington State, typically one of the wettest places in the U.S., the government views the possibility of wildfires as increasingly likely. Large-scale fires that were previously seen every few hundred years are now occurring much more frequently, leading to the need for greater preparedness. 

Small-scale fires in the region have alerted officials to the threat of a greater spread, particularly in areas not prone to fire. Experts are now developing new strategies to mitigate risk, suggesting that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work in a state with such diverse terrain. 

Meanwhile, in California, which has experienced more severe and widespread wildfires in recent years, the fire season started earlier in the year. Various factors have been blamed for the phenomenon, including the build-up of vegetation and global warming. Scientists are now assessing changes in vegetation to understand and prevent wildfires. It is worth noting that a longer fire season does not necessarily equate to more severe blazes; however, preparedness is key to prevention. 

With a massive shake-up expected for federal-level firefighters and changes to U.S. climate, land, and other environmental policies, scientists are concerned about the lack of preparedness to tackle wildfires this dry season. Meanwhile, recent experiences from Washington State and California suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach is simply not possible and that greater research and prevention work needs to take place to mitigate the risk of these fires. 

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