Author name: moderat ereport

by Abe Streep ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Despite the Trump administration’s public pronouncements that it has hired enough wildland firefighters, documents obtained by ProPublica show a high vacancy rate, as well as internal concern among top officials as more than 1 million acres burn across 10 states. Less than a month ago, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the Trump administration had done a historically good job preparing the nation for the summer fire season. “We are on track to meet and potentially exceed our firefighting hiring goals,” said Rollins, during an address to Western governors. Rollins oversees the wildland firefighting workforce at the U.S. Forest Service, a subagency of the Department of Agriculture. Rollins had noted in her remarks that the administration had exempted firefighters from a federal hiring freeze, and she claimed that the administration was outdoing its predecessor: “We have reached 96% of our hiring goal, far outpacing the rate of hiring and onboarding over the past three years and in the previous administration.” Since then, the Forest Service’s assertions have gotten even more optimistic: The agency now claims it has reached 99% of its firefighting hiring goal. But according to internal data obtained by ProPublica, Rollins’ characterization is dangerously misleading. She omitted a wave of resignations from the agency this spring and that many senior management positions remain vacant. Layoffs by the Department of Government Efficiency, voluntary deferred resignations and early retirements have severely hampered the wildland firefighting force. According to the internal national data, which has not been previously reported, more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs — as many as 27% — remained vacant as of July 17. A Forest Service employee who is familiar with the data said it comes from administrators who input staffing information into a computer tool used to create organization charts. The employee said that while the data could contain inaccuracies in certain forests, it broadly reflects the agency’s desired staffing levels. The employee said the data showing “active” unfilled positions was “current and up-to-date for last week.” The Department of Agriculture disputes that assessment, but the figures are supported by anecdotal accounts from wildland firefighters in New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, California and Wyoming. According to a recent survey by Forest Service fire managers in California, 26% of engine captain positions and 42% of engineer positions were vacant. A veteran Forest Service firefighter in California characterized the Trump administration’s current estimate of the size of its firefighting workforce as “grossly inaccurate.” Last week, Tom Schultz, the chief of the Forest Service, circulated a letter to high-ranking officials in the agency that underscored the dire moment. “As expected, the 2025 Fire Year is proving to be extremely challenging,” wrote Schultz in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by ProPublica. “We know the demand for resources outpaces their availability.” Schultz at once directed staff to employ full suppression — stomping out fires as quickly as possible, instead of letting them burn for the sake of landscape management — and acknowledged that the resources necessary to pursue such an aggressive strategy were lacking. All options were on the table, he wrote, including directing human-resources employees to fight fires and asking recently departed employees with firefighting qualifications to return to work. When asked about the discrepancy between Schultz’s memo and Rollins’ public statements on firefighting staffing at the Forest Service, an agency spokesperson said that Schultz was referring to employees who can be called on to bolster the agency’s response “as fire activity increases,” while Rollins was pointing only to full-time firefighters. “The Forest Service remains fully equipped and operationally ready to protect people and communities from wildfire,” the spokesperson said, noting that “many individuals that have separated from the Agency either through retirements or voluntary resignations still possess active wildland fire qualifications and are making themselves available to support fire response operations.” The federal government employs thousands of wildland firefighters, but the precise number is opaque. Throughout the Department of the Interior, which is overseen by Secretary Doug Burgum, there are about 5,800 wildland firefighters in four agencies that have been impacted by cuts. An employee at a national park in Colorado that is threatened by wildfire said that they were “severely understaffed during the Biden administration on most fronts, and now it’s so much worse than it’s ever been.” But the Forest Service is by far the largest employer of wildland firefighters, and it has long used gymnastic arithmetic to paint an optimistic picture of its staffing. Last summer, ProPublica reported that the Forest Service under President Joe Biden had overstated its capacity. Robert Kuhn, a former Forest Service official who between 2009 and 2011 co-authored an assessment of the agency’s personnel needs, recently said that the practice of selectively counting firefighters dates back years. “What the public needs to understand is, that is just a very small number of what is needed every summer,” he said. Riva Duncan, a retired Forest Service fire chief and the vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a labor advocacy organization, said staffing is a constant frustration for managers on the ground. “We have engines that are completely unstaffed,” said Duncan, who remains active in wildland firefighting, having worked in temporary roles this summer. “We have vacant positions in management.” That said, there is a difference this fire season from years past. Officials in the previous administration publicly acknowledged the danger presented by an exodus of experienced wildland firefighters. The Trump administration has taken a different approach — claiming to have solved the problem while simultaneously exacerbating it. When asked about the staffing cuts, Anna Kelly, a White House deputy press secretary, wrote, “President Trump is proud of all Secretary Rollins has accomplished to improve forest management, including by ending the 2001 Roadless Rule for stronger fire prevention, and Secretary Burgum’s great work protecting our