Grassroots Wildland Firefighters on National Wildland Fire Service Proposal

I’d like to post a big thank-you, both to Kelly Martin and to Riva Duncan of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.   Some have accused this thinking as being a creature of the current Admin, which we know would be a death-knell for a policy position from the perspective of any person who has correct thinking (just kidding), but as with so many issues, it’s more complicated than that.

It seems to me that we live in a world where everything is connected, and yet organizations can’t handle everything.  So there need to be divisions.  Think NRCS and FS State and Private, both deal with private landowners, one with all plants, and one with trees.  Plus there’s NIFA Forest Extension to give technical advice. So the agencies are kind of organized by topic (trees) and kind of organized by landowners (targets of policies).  My point being that there will always be organizational hinges or links, that work better or worse, for individuals, inside and outside government, to negotiate.  And folks interested in making government work better try to  a) ensure that the hinges are not hindrances (by organizational design)  and b) oil the hinges that squeak.

Just to back up, Megafire Action, which has ties to D’s,  calls for one department and moving FS to Interior,  from their report.

The Fit for Purpose Wildfire Readiness Act of 2025 marks the new beginning of a broad discussion among Congress, federal agencies, firefighters, land managers, Tribes, and forestry/wildfire policy groups on how to best modernize and streamline federal wildland fire mitigation and management. The bill directs the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior submit a plan with three primary elements—

1. a budget for the National Wildland Firefighting Service;
2. a description of the qualifications required for an individual to be appointed to be the Director of the National Wildland Firefighting Service, who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate; and
3. a description of the resources and authorities necessary to consolidate Federal wildland fire response efforts of the Secretaries in the National Wildland Firefighting Service.

The plan that comes out of this process will require careful coordination and input from all stakeholders. For nearly a year, Megafire Action has been researching past proposals to reorganize and improve the federal wildland fire response. Our assessment has included proposals to relocate the Forest Service under DOI and the creation of a “National Wildland Firefighting Service’’ as envisioned by Senators Sheehy and Padilla.

Note also that the Fit for Purpose Wildfire Readiness Act is bipartisan.  So the idea long predates this Admin.

Now let’s listen to what Riva is saying; I’m with her when she says “we (GWF) know we don’t have all the answers or necessarily the “right” answers, but we do believe the time is right for a real discussion” :

Grassroots Wildland Firefighters (GWF) has had a National Wildfire Service as one of our Four Pillars since the organizations establishment in 2019. We released our proposal shortly after the introduction of the Sheehy/Padilla Bill, but it was lost in a lot of the administration’s chaos at that time. Like the discussion about a NWFS in DOI, and several comments here, a separate agency doesn’t automatically divorce fire suppression from mitigation, ecosystem health, or the land management agencies, nor does it discard the collateral duty workforce (always hated the word “militia” to describe our non-primary fire employees). Ours certainly does not. Also, we (GWF) know we don’t have all the answers or necessarily the “right” answers, but we do believe the time is right for a real discussion. GWF exists in order to represent the boots on the ground and those that directly support them, and that will always be our priority — and something that has been absent in all the other discussions. Our argument has always been that the status quo no longer serves the firefighters. The agencies have failed to protect the workforce, and it’s time to not only think about how we must be able to serve our publics AND our public lands, but also how to serve the people doing the work in an ever riskier and more demanding profession. For those who care to read our proposal, you can do so here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f6ced5b8d33bb20b5c97c0b/t/67a964eb7f17585b0fd3fdf5/1739154668441/GWF+National+Wildland+Fire+Service.pdf

Let’s dig into the GWF report a bit. I recommend reading the whole paper, because I’m not a fire person and what was interesting to me might not be to you and vice versa. Based on the citations, the report was developed since 2023, but Riva can tell us exactly when.

It is past time to build and implement a National Wildland Fire Service (NWFS). For decades, the US Forest Service and Department of Interior (DOI) have refused to do any kind of study or white paper to look at the pros and cons of removing wildland fire, fuels, and aviation response/management from the natural resource agencies. Any serious requests or suggestions have been met with disdain and refusal to even consider such an exercise. Now the FS and DOI struggle to retain experienced wildland firefighters, managers, and support staff such as dispatchers. While the rest of the non-fire workforce is faced with hiring “pauses” and plummeting program budgets, removing fire from these agencies is not only necessary to efficiently address the wildland fire situation, but it just may “save” the rest of the FS and DOI agencies.

Background
The current system of five federal agencies (US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs) under two different departments (USDA and DOI) being tasked with responding to wildland fires on federal lands (and assist cooperators) is extremely inefficient. This is largely due to the fact that while the employees across the agencies essentially do the same jobs, the agencies have different budgets, position descriptions, training standards, payment processing systems, health support programs to only name a few. Even the four agencies within the DOI have numerous inefficiencies and redundancies between them. Wildland firefighters move between agencies regularly, and, when they do, they have to deal with discrepancies in position descriptions, training standards, background checks, HR issues, etc. After the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the mandate for the FS and DOI to change to a new federal job series, the DOI agencies re-graded Interagency Hotshot Crew (IHC) Superintendents at the GS-10 level, while the FS kept these critical positions at the GS-09 level. It is the exact same job. These inefficiencies and duplications are confusing even to those within the agencies and are costing the American taxpayers.

What I hear is “the status quo is not working for us people doing the work.” We can imagine another solution.. “fix those interagency problems without reorganizing” and yet, no one, over all these years, has seemed to be very interested in oiling these particular hinges. So it is not surprising that the workers want to place the hinges elsewhere in the hope that someone else will have to deal with them.

There is a very interesting, and somewhat depressing, review of the National Fire Plan and associated history since the year 2000 starting on page 4. It even cites a report by Michael Rains (frequent TSW contributor) and Jim Hubbard.

Why was FPA never actually implemented? According to 2016 Denver Post interviews with original developers and the Chief of the Forest Service at the time, it came down to the fact that FPA showed that the most efficient way to manage resources and budgets was to shift resources, and therefore funds, from places with less wildfire activity to places with more. The team lead said that initial version took agencies’ objectives and then optimized them to determine how to best allocate resources for the greatest impact. The idea was to figure out how much money to devote to fire suppression and to reducing fuels to improve overall forest health, and where to do it. But when the tool was used for a preliminary analysis in 2006, not everyone liked what it found. The results showed which areas needed more resources and which needed less, throwing into uncertainty budgets used for staff programs and some administrative overhead. Forest Service officials began to publicly cast doubts about the efficacy of FPA, but Douglas Rideout, the CSU wildland-fire economist and researcher, defended the methodology behind the original FPA, noting it passed a peer review published in a scientific journal the year prior. The Former team leader on the project said FPA became a shadow of what it was supposed to be, the victim of forces opposed to a process that would take decisions about where to put resources out of their hands (Olinger and Gorski, 2016). To this date, no other fire planning analysis tool has been developed for implementation.

Neither department, USDA nor DOI, have any current data on the appropriate numbers, mix, and locations of federal wildland firefighting resources. They continue to cling to what has become an arbitrary number of approximately 14,000-16,000 firefighters. None of the federal agencies have developed a modern formula for determining how many wildland firefighters and support personnel are truly needed to address 21st century issues. It can be done. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CALFIRE) has one and bases its staffing and funding from it. Many municipal fire departments in California have similar formulas.

My experience was with a GAO review that suggested that beltway-bandit- generated models would be better at determining allocations. Peer review is great, but people have fears and if those fears are not dealt with directly, telling them that something about budget allocation is “scientific” is not particularly helpful.  When resources don’t come, “the AI told us that optimal allocation was for someone else” will not make people feel better.  And undersecretaries will probably still order air tankers to Long Island.  Still, an interesting question.. how did CALFIRE successfully do it?

There’s a strong concern about background of people deciding about wildfires.

Historically, before promoting into these positions, people worked their way up through the agencies in forestry, engineering, biology, range, and wildland fire positions. They spent years as field-going employees and then mid-level managers before moving into positions such as District Ranger, District Manager, Park Superintendent, Refuge Manager, etc. Many had fought fire early in their careers. However, over the past 15 or so years there has been a significant push to hire people from non-traditional programs or even from outside the natural resource agencies. A by-product of this shift is that the average age of a District Ranger in the FS has dropped dramatically, which means people holding those positions are at earlier stages in their career instead of later. We can argue that most now don’t bring fire experience into these jobs, but what is also alarming is many bring little work experience of any kind as they come from special placement programs such as the Presidential Management Fellow program (very popular in the FS) after graduate school. The FS is placing numerous people from this program into line officer positions on national forests with large, complex fire programs.

What this really means is that individuals with no fire education or experience are being tasked with making extremely critical decisions about wildfire within their jurisdictions. Decisions that could have catastrophic results. The situation has gotten so dire that the federal agencies developed an accelerated fire management training program for people in these positions.
However, rather than competency, the goal seems to be rapid certification, which does nothing to resolve the issue. These agency administrators oversee wildfire incident commanders, which is unsettling. Much like if someone with only a basic first aid class were put in charge of a hospital’s emergency department.

My bold.  That’s a pretty strong statement, but it’s very clear about their concerns.

What this has meant is individuals with the ultimate wildfire decision-making authority have put wildland firefighters, and often the public, in harm’s way, by making poor and/or uniformed decisions. These are not usually malicious actions, but typically come from places of ignorance, inexperience, incompetence, or fear of torpedoing their young careers. This also means that line officers can “hold” resources back from critical suppression needs. It is common for some line officers to cancel suppression resources’ availability to assist other regions when those requesting regions are experience high fire activity.

I first heard these concerns at the Retirees Roundup in Vail in 2012. When the retirees expressed concerns about the fire experience of line officers, I felt like the FS was saying “this is the way it’s got to be, so we’re doing the best we can with more training.” As to holding resources back, of course people are worried about how decisions are made to use resources. That’s why States like Colorado and California are buying their own.