As I have said before, when Frank Carroll and Sarah Hyden agree on something…it’s worthy of paying attention to- a Policy Situation That Shouts Watch Out.
Frank has a couple of interesting policy suggestions.. what do you think? Any hate-mail-ish comments will not be approved.
Although people use “Project 2025” as a kind of scare-buzz-word, please consider that it’s full of different ideas, by different authors, with different flavors and all the ideas might not be bad just because they’re included in the document.
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Joe and I receive our share of hate mail for our role in P25, just about every day.
Most of you will recall helping to prepare the Forest Service overview and issues “briefing books” for the incoming administration, Democrat or Republican. It was a binder with all the stats about us, how many personnel, timber cut and sold, and wildfire stats from the previous year. I looked forward to it because it was interesting to me, a recap of who we were and what we were doing.
Most organizations prepared similar briefing books. They were wish lists, aspirational thoughts, ideas, plans, and programs a new administration could pick up and use to change the [fill in the blank] World. In 2023 and 2024, the Heritage Foundation prepared a briefing book, now called P25.
When Joe called, and we started writing our aspirational view of what needed to change to bring wildfire policy in line with law and public expectations, we were thinking about a number of factors, including the alarming loss of life (16 civilians caught in their beds in Berry Creek in the North Complex) and public and private property (for which there is no recourse in law to compensate property owners for unilateral decisions by AAs and ICs) from letting wildfires burn, and making them bigger on purpose, in line with the new land management agencies’ theology that all fire is good fire. We vigorously oppose the notion that we can burn back better in almost any scenario, absent a combination of management and timing outside of wildfire season. Hell, as Joe rightly points out, there is no provision in law for using fire to manage natural resources, wild or prescribed.
Our tiny effort, in the context of 900 pages of the P25, seemed benign enough, a forlorn hope, as we said in the comment. Imagine our surprise when we not only received a fair hearing, but we made huge strides in changing the whole “applied wildfire” paradigm and stopping it dead as of this writing. Both the Chiefs of the Forest Service and the Wildland Fire Service have issued unequivocal orders to stop the practice and return to putting out wildfires now, immediately, in direct attack, or in indirect attack on the next best ridge, not 30 miles to the northwest, as happened on the 2020 Bush Fire.
The fire organizations at the District and Forest levels haven’t been fully converted yet, as we are seeing with the big-box burn on the Hummingbird Fire on the Gila this morning. But the orders are clear enough. They are not like the Pirates’ Code, more of what you might call “guidelines.”
Following Tom Tidwell’s Chevron Deference Memo in 2009, changing wildfire policies that had devolved into fire as the only significant management tool available to the agency–no one can sue a fire decision maker, there is no scoping, no alternative development outside of WFDSS, and no appeal–and they were using it with abandon. Over 60 percent of the million-acre Dixie Fire was lit by firefighters, for example.
We are now determined to attempt to strip the discretionary authority exception from the law. As things stand, it is virtually impossible to hold agency officers accountable for wildfire decisions or other discretionary decisions because they enjoy an exception that bars lawsuits against them, even for cause. What it means is when a line officer and incident commander decide to let a fire burn, like Dragon Bravo last year, or to make a fire bigger for “natural resource benefits,” like, *sigh*, too many to list, there is no compensation for private and other property owners harmed by those decisions. Ending the discretionary function exception would subject agency personnel to the same standards and liabilities as the rest of us. If you decide to intentionally light stuff on fire, you’d best be prepared to compensate me for the damage. We believe this provision alone would do much to leaven agency decisions about wildfire.
Another angle we are exploring is an amendment to an Act that would require the government to compensate damaged parties in a straightforward claims process outside the Federal Tort Claims Act. We won the first two FTCA cases we ever worked on following our retirements in 2011. It was like catching a 24-inch trout the first time you ever went fishing. From then on, no fish could compare, and every fish was disappointing!
In any event, thanks for checking out our story. It’s been quite a ride.
Interesting viewpoint. Of note, I have not seen the written direction (from either FS or WFS) cited as: “Both the Chiefs of the Forest Service and the Wildland Fire Service have issued unequivocal orders to stop the practice and return to putting out wildfires now, immediately, in direct attack, or in indirect attack…”
In wilderness or other areas (de facto wilderness or otherwise) where naturally ignited wildfires may be managed for ecological purposes? To the best of my knowledge, no order has been issued by DOI or WFS as described in the article. Please let me know if I am mistaken.
Updated 4/30/26. I found the Leader’s Intent from DOI Secretary (issued 4/08/26), which states that: Given the Department of the Interior’s responsibilities to safeguard communities, landscapes, habitat and critical infrastructure, we will enter this season with the presumption of a full suppression strategy applied to every wildfire under DOI management.
Suppression actions must be prompt, decisive and based on values at risk—balanced with firefighter safety and a clear assessment of probability of success. Until conditions permit, all unplanned ignitions will receive a suppression response, using direct or indirect strategies as conditions dictate.
While indirect approaches may occasionally be warranted, direct suppression should remain the default.
Yes I saw that. I’m still a bit confused about Indirect strategies vs. indirect tactics.
I still recall, back in early part of 2023 when Project 2025 was first published online. Since that day, I have read 10-15 chapters and numerous “training videos” that Heritage Foundation made to guide potential administration staff. Dont worry, I wont give a dissertation on my thoughts of P25, but i will say that i wish more people would have taken this document serious at that time, as it lined out the playbook for many things that are now experiencing. But that doesn’t really matter now.
In regards to the interests of TSW and this blog post, I believe the Forest Service chapter is fairly benign when compared to many others. As was stated in a prior blog post, it didnt address the reorg, budget constraints, increased procedural hurdles and required WO/Departmental approvals for routine business, or loss in organizational talent. But what the FS chapter did include is a laundry list of criticisms and recommendations that have been discussed for many years, both within and outside the agency. As current, and long term employee within the NFS Fire program, is my sincere hope that the decisions already made, and those that are sure to come, will result in measurable improvements in at least some areas. Particularly as we speed towards what appears to be a terrible 2026 wildire season that will be a barometer for how we operate in the future. I wish all my fellow FS coworkers good luck in the months ahead.
On another note, can someone share the reference to where it was determined that 60% of the acres burned in the Dixie Fire were lit by firefighters, as claimed in this post?
Project 2025 and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party want a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people.
The good news? There are plenty of Indigenous Nations who can afford to buy much of the land in the public domain if it indeed goes up for sale and after a 23-year effort and $56 million about 47,000 acres in the Klamath Basin have been returned to the Yurok Tribe after studies showed how conservation goals are more effectively met when Indigenous peoples manage their own territories. There is at least a $billion in the fund for the Black Hills Claim just for instance so some day tribes will buy some of their own land from the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in occupied South Dakota and Wyoming.
Ahead of the 2023 White House Tribal Nations Summit and as part of the Cobell settlement the Interior Department’s Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, some three million acres in fifteen states were returned to tribal trust ownership including in New Mexico.
I think using a tragic lightning bust complex as an example of how bad wildfires can be and suggesting that or other fires like the Dixie are the result of intentional burning is disingenuous. We need to put out more fires? What about an ounce of prevention? We can keep growing the fire staff and throwing money and bodies at fires, but that won’t prevent the increase in fuels that result from fire suppression. Spend half as much reducing fuels and putting in fuelbreaks and you can make real progress toward reducing fire risk. Admit the role of humans setting fires, of climate change, and of inconsistent management and fund the Forest Service and research to address the issues. Do prescribed burns get out of hand? Of course- we should conduct an AAR of those fires. Adding litigation and demanding quicker response is not going to help emergency actions.
I agree. Very well stated and to the point. Suggesting that the burnout and/or backfiring operations were callously or arbitrarily “lit by firefighters” is not only disingenuous, but uninformed and a slap in the face to the Agency Administrator(s) and the Incident Management Team(s). And beyond fire containment and control, the question becomes about the severity and intensity of the fire during these key operational procedures. In my 40+ years on the line and at the ICP, I have seen this to be a major consideration…environmental conditions, weather, night or day ignition, etc. We have some tremendous success stories. And we have had some outcomes that are less than desirable. We have the tools (ISAP, RMA, WFDSS, IFTDSS, among others) to do what is right, whether containing a large wildfire or planning the next prescribed fire.