The U.S. Forest Service says it has now exceeded its wildland firefighter hiring targets for this summer's fire season.
Newly released numbers provided by the agency to NPR show that 11,550 seasonal staff are now either being trained or ready to deploy, which is about 200 more than their initial goals and about 6% ahead of schedule compared to this time in recent years.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz credits the solid numbers to recent pay raises for wildland firefighters. The hiring comes as Western states are historically dry and on edge, with fast moving wildfires igniting in the last day in and around populated areas such as Spokane, Washington.
"I think the conditions we have are alarming," Schultz told NPR. "But the Forest Service will be prepared for this season."
But in the West, many state officials and former agency employees aren't so sure given the continued downsizing of the agency.
Since President Trump returned to the White House last year, the USFS has lost close to 6,000 permanent staff to layoffs, buyouts or early retirements. The agency is also undergoing a massive reorganization which includes moving its headquarters to Utah and the closure or consolidation of dozens of research facilities and regional offices. The Trump administration says it wants to put the agency closer to the actual forests it manages.
But Dave Upthegrove, Washington state's elected public lands commissioner says, "these layoffs at the federal level are presenting risk as to our ability to respond to major wildfires."
He's worried that the downsizing of the Forest Service will lead to a shortage of elite incident command teams that states like his rely on during major fires. An untold number of permanent staff like rangers or timber technicians who have been let go recently also held what are called red cards, meaning they're trained to leave their regular jobs and deploy to wildfires.
"If we have a bad year for fire throughout the United States it could mean a shortage of these federal teams," Upthegrove says. "We are preparing contingency plans."
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