Update: Additional FY26 Trump Budget Request Details - DOI/USWFS

[u/Flat-Suggestion-8373]

Earlier today, DOI released their departmental-level summary for their FY26 budget request: https://www.doi.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2025-06/fy26bibentire-book508060125.pdf. USDA released their summary a few days ago, which was highlighted in an earlier post.

DOI’s summary includes a section for the new “U.S. Wildland Fire Service,” which would replace OWF and be a bureau-level organization within DOI. Overall the request would provide $3.7b in dedicated base funding for the service, which is equivalent to the total of the base funding provided to the the two departments for their individual WFM and haz fuels programs in FY25 ($1.1b for DOI, $2.6 for FS).

Additional details will likely be made available with the release of the account-specific congressional justification books in the coming weeks/months. These materials will give a better idea of what trade offs the Admin. would make to pay for standing up a new agency without providing a significant increase in dedicated funding above baseline levels to do so.

Of course, the normal caveats apply regarding these budget requests being an initial offer of sorts from the Admin., with Congress generally having a final say.

[u/Silver_Unit_8960]

I still don’t really understand the advantage of this if there still needs to be coordination with land management agencies (especially for fuels and BAR) and what about militia? They’re trying to RIF/reassign/scare into quitting all the IT and HR personnel while simultaneously adding an entirely new agency and poaching thousands of fire people from USFS? That will go well 🤦‍♀️

Also the acronym is way too close to USFWS…

[u/rockshox11 → u/Silver_Unit_8960]

There's a couple human factors that probably go into this that I can imagine: first, that this administration is obsessed with taking credit for things, whether that credit is due to them or not- creating a new agency to supersede the existing ones is a bigger accomplishment for them than reform. They get to claim their leadership is a triumph over failed Democrat policies, or something. Its also easier because, probably realistically, its more tenable to create a new agency than to reform several existing ones with entrenched and messy politics and stakeholders. I'd also consider that part of the rationale in creating the USWFS is implicitly about taking away operational control from the federal landholders- no need to consult line officers or resources folks when the unilateral mission is full suppression. The forests can pick up the pieces after with BAER funds, I guess. Lastly, it gives them a special opportunity to appoint their own personnel who support the mandate for a return to the 10am rule. It allows for the decoupling of personnel between agencies who might otherwise have "resources minded" (read: unwanted) tendencies.

Are they going to fuck this up? I'd bet a dollar that they do. But in the long run there will probably be reform, hopefully in the next administration, when they realize there was a reason we got away from full suppression in the first place and "logging" the WUI is not a viable fuels management strategy. It'll probably work out for the best, eventually, but there's going to be some very difficult growing pains along the way. The real mystery, in my opinion, is whether or not they are going to fully hang their hats on contractors, or whether they in good faith intend to staff the USWFS with federal firefighters. If that's the case, they can't afford to lose any more bodies in the transition, which will probably be the crux of it.

[u/pegasuspish → u/rockshox11]

They intend to staff it with politically obedient yes men. A major stepping stone on the way to selling off public lands, while their contractor owner buddies make a killing. Everybody wins, see. This is all proj 2025

[u/[deleted] → u/Silver_Unit_8960]

An advantage would be that money could possibly be spent on what it’s intended for instead of being leached upon by other functions and fire being used as a piggy bank to fund things that haven’t been deemed important enough to pay for with tax payer dollars.

[u/Flat-Suggestion-8373 → u/[deleted]]

It’s often the other way around. Between 1995 and 2015, the portion of FS’s annual budget used for fire increased from under a quarter to over half. https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2015-Fire-Budget-Report.pdf

[u/hornfrog67 → u/Flat-Suggestion-8373]

This is the true answer. Programs don't leach off of fire, its fire that leach from other programs through lack of appropriations. "Fire Borrowing" was one of the biggest budget busters for non-fire programs across the FS. The money would eventually get repaid but not before millions in projects was put on hold.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You guys should be happy then. No more fire folks bringing ya down.

[u/[deleted]]

Ompff, this is gonna be a shit sandwich.

[u/hornfrog67 → u/[deleted]]

Agreed - there is lots of fire functions imbedded in local agency operations. There are thousands of employees hired for one job but back up and support fire operations on an as needed basis - these aren't permanent fire fighters. Coupled with the gutting of staffing at DOI and the USFS, adding another agency to the mix to interact and coordinate with is going to be potentially life threatening for the firefighters.

[u/Spithead → u/[deleted]]

Yeah this will a decade plus before it becomes even relatively smooth operationally. Even just the logistics of facilities (who works where, who's allowed to live in what govt housing, what happens to usfs facilities/equipment with a new agency). It'll be a huge shitshow and it'll only make our jobs harder.

There's an argument to be made that USFS should be moved under DOI. That would at least get rid of USDA/DOI interagency nonsense. Even that would take a couple years to hammer out.

[u/dave54athotmailcom]

Another disadvantage not mentioned is many of the PSEs found work in the off season with other shops, like timber, wildlife and recreation, instead of being laid off. This gave them breadth of experience plus year around employment. Under the new agency that opportunity will most likely disappear.

Yeah, the USWFS and USFWS are too close together for sister agencies in the same Dept. That needs to be fixed.

How to coordinate with the Resource Management side of the job needs to be worked out. The host agencies will still need an FMO type person to be a liaison with the fire shop. Different fire policies on different units will need to be taken into consideration -- for example, a National Forest adjacent to a National Park will have different priorities and fire use policies, yet both are served by the same USWFS personnel. Fuels projects require close coordination with the resource specialists of the host agency.

At first, I am assuming the fire crews will operate out of the same facilities as they do currently, even if co-located at a District office. I suspect eventually they will move out to their own brand new stations and facilities located nearby. Over time, many fire crews on currently adjacent units may be consolidated.

All budgets and policies are political. This will not change. The current administration is not addressing the deficit as promised, and is in fact increasing it. There will be budgetary pressure in the future as Congress faces the growing deficit and is forced to reduce appropriations. The smart manager will consider the FY2026 budget as 'bubble money' that will not be there in a few years.

[u/Wanderingghost12 → u/dave54athotmailcom]

Yeah I was wondering about that too. Does this mean that 80% of their staffing is seasonal? How tf would that work?

[u/dave54athotmailcom → u/Wanderingghost12]

Who knows? A lot of detail needs to be worked out.

When new agencies are normally created, there are a couple years of transition to figure out how to make it work. This agency has 6-7 months to hit the ground running.

[u/Wanderingghost12 → u/dave54athotmailcom]

I can't imagine that any of this will be a smooth transition. There's way too many questions and potential problems that other people have pointed out

[u/TownshipRangeSection]

Sounds good on paper, in practice it is going to be half-baked and create unnecessary levels of bureaucracy. Collaboration between stakeholders and agencies? It just got a whole lot more difficult for everyone.

[u/BACKCUT-DOWNHILL → u/TownshipRangeSection]

Having the USFS, BLM, Fish and feathers and parkies spread out across the USDA and DOI isn’t unnecessary levels of bureaucracy?

[u/UltramaficBasalt → u/BACKCUT-DOWNHILL]

Alright me and my crew now work for the USWFS instead of the forest service — but the FS owns our rigs, do we keep them or are we walking now? It also appropriated all our gear, do we keep it or do they? They administer our housing — do we still have access, and if we do how does selection between FS and USWFS employees work? Who do my FMO and AFMO report to? Do we still work out of the FS district office we do now or do we have to move to the other side of the Cascades to start operating out of the nearest DOI land?

Nobody proposing this has serious answers to these questions. Anything we lose access to fucks us. Anything we keep access to now requires inter-agency coordination for what used to be routine and in-house. Maybe systems get worked out eventually but for at least a season after this goes into effect it’s gonna be a shitshow.

[u/ResidentOverhead → u/UltramaficBasalt]

The proposed budget did appear to address at least some of this, it clearly gave authority to the secretaries to make transfers. Which seems reasonable to assume this means funding, equipment, potentially facilities etc… All equipment purchased with fire funds will get transferred to the new agency.

Facilities will likely be leased in the short term and new ones potentially leased or purpose built in the longer term.

Your local FMO will likely report to some Deputy Regional FMO, who will report to a Regional FMo who will report to a National FMO. What their actual titles will be, I have no clue. FMOs will have delegated responsibility over a geographic area and have resources and funding to manage their zone. The structure is there, if just needs details ironed out.

100% though the first 5 years will be a rough period of change for most firefighters. As the saying goes “firefighters hate two things, change and the way things are”.

[u/Whiskey_Jack → u/ResidentOverhead]

Yeah, except a lot of the people who have actual knowledge about how all these specifics and contracting needs work just DRP'd and more are soon to get RIF'd. Dispatch centers are getting absolutely hollowed out by the early retirements.

It's just extremely poorly thought out, and I have a feeling Sheehy and his ilk want it to fail spectacularly so they can start selling public lands and hand everything to private contractors due to the ineptitude of the feds.

Every single person here knows how underfunded these programs are and that they just need funding for employees and fuels work, this is not that.

Im not even opposed to a separate agency. It sucks that Recreation, timber and wildlife have their budgets fucked by fire every year. But there is absolutely no mention of that in any of this.

[u/TownshipRangeSection → u/BACKCUT-DOWNHILL]

Having them still spread out, utilizing their facilities and equipment, but not working for those agencies directly isnt more bureaucracy? Seems like there will be positions created just to work between this new agency and the land management agencies that quarter this new agency.

[u/FishSafe7347 → u/BACKCUT-DOWNHILL]

Those agencies will still all need to work together, you can just add the USWFS to the alphabet soup.

[u/BigWhiteDog]

While this is a good idea and has been a long time coming, why is it that I have little faith in this turning out well? I guarantee you that they have no clue how incredibly complex this whole process is going to be. I'm also betting they have no clue that they will have to deal with a lot of state and local governments in the process, such as the hated California! 🤣

Then there is the shit show that is the federal air tanker program.

This is going to be interesting to say the least and I only hope that all of you still on the job don't get hosed.

[u/letscott]

I read that as USFWS I’ll see myself out now

[u/LadyWarBoss]

Wondering if the 24 CCC FS-managed Job Corps locations will continue operations & support, training future fire fighters. (The 99 contract centers are currently sending students home & are to pause operations by 6/30)

[u/JanomeS7 → u/LadyWarBoss]

The 24 FS centers are funded through DOL so funding would have to be appropriated from this new Wildland Fire Service...there are several senators who want to propose a bill to turn these centers into fire based training locations. But, if you look at the numbers trained versus numbers employed as FFTs, it's staggering low compared to the cost. There'd have to be a considerable amount of money pumped into those 24 programs to realign with that mission.

[u/FrontAcanthisitta402 → u/[deleted]]

A whole list just came out of centers they are closing. Includes ones operated by DOL and USFS. I guess they can post up their new fire shops. Separating fire from land management is nuts - adding a whole new agency AND under DHS? good god almighty.

[u/RogerfuRabit]

This is totally a scam to funnel money into various contractors’ pockets, but eh fuck it. Ive tried voting against it. That didnt work. And Im mid-career, so probably stuck on the ride. My guesses about upcoming changes include:

• FS resources will stay put in the short-term (few years), but get rebranded ASAP. Some remote stations will get the ax. Consolidations will occur. New stations will be built.
• There will probably be a demand to roll more.
• More contract resources on campaign fires, with federal overhead (so ops normal, but continuing the trend).
• Feds will retain IA responsibilities.
• More IHCs, way less throw-together T2IA crews.
• What will happen to the smokejumpers?

But… I’ll take some of those changes, if we get some positive developments too:

• Can we get regional guard schools?
• Regional engine academies? Centralized training would free me up to roll more.
• Our own HR?
• How about 7 day coverage most of the year, so I dont have to work my weekends. Having consistent weekends off in the summer, balanced financially by more rolls/year, that could be a nice change.

[u/hack_nasty → u/RogerfuRabit]

Last two bullets I’m in for

[u/JanomeS7]

That list is not accurate (as of when I left office yesterday at 1730). It's just contract run DOL centers, it's easier to cancel contracts and close those centers then the FS (fed) centers where there's fed employees. Yes, it's in the proposed budget to defund all the centers. Most of the fed centers sit on NF property so it would take money to shut us down due to the infrastructure. There's a lot of support for our fed centers with the conversation of converting them to firefighter training facilities (again more money needed). I'm an AFMO at one of those centers and while I believe it needs a significant re-vamp, we do good things.

[u/YOLO_Bundy]

About time!

[u/Lee_Vings_Lovechild]

If they permafix pay my crusty boomer ass might come out of retirement