In a flurry of signatures in June 2025, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced the “Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response” executive order and signed the “Aerial Firefighting Enhancement Act of 2025” into law. Consolidation of Federal firefighting efforts with an eye toward streamlining operations while shifting more of the burden to the states was the order’s theme.

The president’s executive order addressed five specific areas: Streamlining Federal Wildland Fire Governance, Encouraging Local Wildfire Preparedness and Response, Strengthening Wildfire Mitigation, and Modernizing Wildfire Prevention and Response.

 

Streamlining Federal Wildland Fire Governance

Uniting the Departments of Interior (DOI) and Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service’s wildland firefighting efforts into a single agency is expected to reduce response times while increasing the number of assets that could be assigned to fight a fire. The executive order calls for the establishment of a new agency, to be known as the U.S. Wildland Fire Service (USWFS), which will have a budget of US$3.70 billion for operations and funding of US$2.85 billion for the Wildfire Suppression Operations Reserve Fund, totalling US$6.55 billion. USWFS will provide fire management and risk reduction for more than 693 million acres currently managed by the DOI and Forest Service. It is envisioned that the USWFS will streamline operations and increase coordination between federal, state, and local agencies.

According to the Forest Service’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2026: “The U.S. Wildland Fire Service will unify logistical and support functions such as dispatching, training, IT, reporting, financial management, and contracting, as well as provide response for initial attack, extended attack, and large fire support. It also will facilitate hazardous fuels mitigation operations (both mechanical and prescribed fire) for Federal land management agencies. This landmark reform will improve the effectiveness of Federal wildfire response, streamline coordination with non-Federal partners, and better position America to combat the wildfire crisis.”

 

The executive order states, “The Federal Government can empower State and local leaders by streamlining Federal wildfire capabilities to improve their effectiveness and promoting commonsense, technology-enabled local strategies for land management and wildfire response and mitigation.” However, many western states have taken issue with the Federal government’s attempt to shift responsibility for forest fire suppression to the states, especially in California, where 57 per cent of the forests are federally owned, while the state only owns three per cent.

In California in the month of June 2025, there were 116 wildland fires that consumed more than 50,600 acres. This occurred at a time when the Trump Administration federalized 2,000 California National Guard troops to support the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s immigration actions in the Los Angeles area. The administration’s actions reduced the number of California National Guard firefighting troops, known as Joint Task Force Rattlesnake and employed by the state’s fire agency known as CAL FIRE, by nearly 60 per cent.

Encouraging Local Wildfire Preparedness and Response

The Secretaries of Agriculture, Interior, and Homeland Security were directed to reduce bureaucracy through various legal instruments to facilitate mutual aid agreements and partnerships to enable federal, state, local, tribal, and community-based organizations to engage in wildfire risk mitigation efforts and improve response to fires including on public lands.

 

Strengthening Wildfire Mitigation

The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency was instructed to modify or rescind rules around prescribed burns as well as to examine rules governing the types and composition of fire retardants. Powerline management within forested areas was cited as an ignition source, and improving fuels management near powerlines was called out for attention by the Secretaries of Agriculture and Energy, as well as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Modernizing Wildfire Prevention and Response

Through the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the president directed that a roadmap to increasing state and local firefighting capabilities be expanded through the adoption and use of artificial intelligence, data sharing, new fire modeling and mapping capabilities, and technologies to identify wildland fire ignitions as well as weather forecasts to improve response and resident evacuation. In addition, improving efforts to prevent and respond to wildfires through better forest health management and year-round response readiness was also cited.

 

Until January of this year, the thought of a wildland fire descending into the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles was a concern, but never envisioned to be a reality. Traditionally, the fire season in Southern California runs from late May through the middle of October. The first four months of the 2025 Water Year (October 2024 to January 2025) were among the top three driest on record for Southern California.

Bordered on one side by the Pacific Ocean with prevailing winds in January typically onshore, the general consensus was that a fire would most likely start in the hills north and west of Pacific Palisades and would be fought in the coastal sage scrub and woodlands of the adjacent Topanga State Park. Instead, what started as a small, 10-acre brush fire at 10:30 a.m. local time on January 7, had grown to 700 acres by 2 p.m., to more than 1,250 acres by 3 p.m., and nearly 3,000 acres by 9 p.m., that evening. Some 35 miles to the east in the Pasadena/Altadena area, a brush fire began around 6.p.m., later dubbed “The Eaton Fire.” Both fires and a number of other small conflagrations were fanned by sustained “Santa Ana” winds of 55 to 60 mph. The combination of high Santa Ana winds blowing from east to west, combined with extremely dry fuels saw both fires grow exponentially.

Staffed and prepared for an off-season fire, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and other local departments reacted quickly, pouring resources into the fire areas, but no agency or group of agencies could deal with a conflagration of such magnitude. The executive order’s recognition that fire season extends year-round in some parts of the nation was seen as a positive sign.

Making DoD Aircraft Available to Fight Wildland Fires

Both the president’s executive order and the Aerial Firefighting Enhancement Act of 2025 (see below) set-forth legislation to enable the Department of Defense to sell surplus aircraft to air tanker operators. In addition, the act also allows firefighting aircraft to drop water in addition to retardant. The retardant-only rule for aircraft working fires on Federal land was an artifact from the Wildfire Suppression Aircraft Transfer Act of 1996.

It should be noted that nearly 40 years ago, a scandal arose when air tanker operators attempted to obtain surplus ex-military aircraft for firefighting. In the mid-1980s, air tanker operators were flying a mix of World War II and Korean War vintage bombers and transports while hundreds of newer, more robust turboprop military aircraft sat in storage in the Arizona desert. At the time, there was no process for tanker operators to obtain modern, turboprop-powered aircraft from surplus government stocks.

Of course, when there’s a need, someone will always try to fill it.

In 1987, the C-119 air tanker fleet was grounded, leaving a large gap in air tanker availability and capacity. In December of that year, an idea was floated where the U.S. Air Force would transfer a number of C-130A models to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, who would in turn trade them to C-119 operators and the Flying Boxcars would be delivered to various Air Force Base Museums to represent an historic aircraft type operated by the service. After further review, the U.S. Air Force declined to participate in the proposal.

 

When the Air Force backed out of the deal, it was suggested that the Forest Service obtain the surplus C-130s, declared excess by the Air Force, from the General Services Administration (America’s accounting and property custodian) and make the trades directly. According to national regulations, title to the aircraft were to remain with the Forest Service. However, when the C-130s and P-3 Orion patrol bombers were transferred to the air tanker operators, the bills of sale transferred title from the U.S. government to the tanker companies. On top of the paperwork snafu, the broker who set-up the deal received title to four C-130As as a commission, that he then sold for more than US$1 million. A whistleblower brought the program to an end, and two men were eventually sentenced to prison time for their participation in the scheme.

The one positive aspect of the scandal is that Congress recognized the need to populate the aerial firefighting fleet with surplus military aircraft. This was done through the Wildfire Suppression Aircraft Transfer Act of 1996.

Impact of Budget Cuts to be Felt

While the pen was moving at the White House to make additional aircraft available to air tanker operators, government reduction efforts and budget cuts have cut a wide swath across the U.S. Forest Service. Staff reductions initiated by the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE, voluntary resignations, and early retirements have seen more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs go unfilled as of mid-July – some 27 per cent of the workforce. Employees were, depending upon their employment situation, essentially forced to accept DOGE’s deferred resignation offer and early retirements, of which some 1,600 Forest Service workers who took the buy-out were certified to work on fire crews. Coupled with reduced staffing at the Forest Service, the National Weather Service (NWS) lost 600 positions through buyouts and early retirements as well. On average, of the 122 NWS offices, most are down 20 per cent, while in eight of those offices, more than 35 per cent of the staff have departed – many of those unfilled positions were critical to providing weather forecasts to wildland firefighters.

 

On July 24, 2025, Secretary Brook L. Rollins of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, of which the U.S. Forest Service is an agency within, presented an immediate plan to shutter nine regional offices of the Forest Service over the next 12 months. This action eliminates the position of regional foresters – the people who have their fingers on the pulse of the land they work, providing guidance to forest supervisors. Those members of the staff left standing will be relocated to five hub offices (Fort Collins, Colo.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Kansas City, Mo.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Salt Lake City, Utah), and two administrative offices at Minneapolis, Minn., and Albuquerque, N.M.

The Forest Service’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget request eliminates funding for Forest and Rangeland Research as well as the State, Private, and Tribal Forestry accounts and transfers the Forest Service Wildland Fire Management appropriations to the Department of the Interior to help create the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

The “Fix Our Forests Act”

Another piece of forestry-related legislation, H.R.471, the “Fix Our Forests Act,” identifies certain areas at high risk for wildfires as “fireshed” management areas and directs the Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey to jointly establish an interagency Fireshed Center that is responsible for duties related to assessing and predicting fire. The Fireshed Center would make this information available on a website accessible to the public. H.R.471 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives during the middle of the Los Angeles Wildfires on January 16, 2025. However, it seems stalled in the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources. The last action on the bill was Senate subcommittee hearings on March 6, 2025. There has been no recorded movement since the March hearings, and the president’s executive order essentially eliminates the Forest Service’s participation in the act.

Aerial Firefighting Enhancement Act of 2025

During a time of political upheaval and party in-fighting, the Aerial Firefighting Enhancement Act signed by President Trump on June 12, received bipartisan support having been introduced by U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), and co-sponsored by Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) with support from Representatives Jake Ellzey (R-Texas) and Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), as well as Senators Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), James Risch (R-Idaho), and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.).

“As a former Navy SEAL and the only aerial firefighter in the Senate, I understand government’s most solemn duty is to keep the American people safe,” said Sheehy. “Combatting the threat of catastrophic wildfires is a year-round mission, and we must ensure our aerial wildfire suppression fleet has the resources needed to protect our communities.”

The Aerial Firefighting Enhancement Act of 2025 amends the Wildfire Suppression Aircraft Transfer Act of 1996, enabling the Department of Defense (DoD) to sell surplus military aircraft and supporting parts to civilian air tanker operators. Putting additional firefighting-capable aircraft into the air tanker fleet will enable greater air attack capabilities and allow aerial firefighting companies to reduce the age of their fleets by eliminating older aircraft. The 1996 Act’s authority was in effect through 2005, when it expired. Authorization to continue to sell ex-military aircraft for aerial firefighting was granted in 2012; however, it lapsed five years later in 2017. The Aerial Firefighting Enhancement Act of 2025 will be in effect until Oct. 1, 2035.

“I’m proud to partner with Senator Sheehy on this bipartisan legislation that will help aerial wildfire firefighting contractors continue purchasing excess equipment from the military to support their heavy aircraft,” Heinrich said. “I have worked for years to expand the operations of Very Large Air Tankers that have proven absolutely essential to firefighters battling large wildfires in New Mexico, Los Angeles, and across the West.” To his credit, in 2022, Heinrich was able to secure $15.9 million in funding through the U.S. Air Force to upgrade the Cibola National Forest Air Tanker Base, which is located on Kirtland AFB, outside Albuquerque, N.M. The upgrades enlarged that air tanker base to accommodate Very Large Air Tankers (VLATs) capable of dropping up to 9,400 gallons (35,583 liters) of water or retardant per pass. Upgrades at the Cibola National Forest Air Tanker Base were completed on April 29, 2024, in time for the state’s summer wildland and grassland fire season.

 

Looking to the Future

The United Aerial Firefighters Association (UAFA), an industry trade group, is highly supportive of the executive order and believes there is a need for wildfire reform in the United States, and that the executive order, supported by Congress, will drive that reform.

“All of the items that are in the executive order are items that are needed at the local, state, and federal levels to help combat the wildfire crisis. Wildfire response, hazardous fuels reduction, and fire safe communities are all areas that need focus, funding, and continued commitment,” said Paul Petersen, UAFA executive director. “Overall, this will be great for the industry in both the short and long term. Short term, the executive order calls for the consolidation of programs, including budgets, procurement processes, research, etc., that will simplify the number of solicitations, align the contracts, and allow for new technology to be tested and used. Long-term procurement planning will greatly assist private industry to develop, procure, and continue to provide an excellent service to the public and the firefighters on the ground.”