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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.<\/p>\n
The top Democrat on a House committee is demanding that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins account for discrepancies between her public statements about wildland firefighter staffing and a ProPublica report showing there were thousands of vacancies in the Forest Service\u2019s firefighting workforce as peak wildfire season approached.<\/p>\n
In June, the Forest Service claimed it had reached 99% of its hiring goal for its wildland firefighting workforce. But ProPublica\u2019s reporting indicated that the agency was selectively counting firefighters, presenting an optimistic assessment to the public. As many as 27% of jobs were vacant as of July 17, according to data obtained by ProPublica.<\/p>\n
Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California and the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made the request to Rollins in a letter sent Thursday morning. \u201cThe Trump Administration\u2019s staffing decisions are exacerbating an already dire situation: The Forest Service\u2019s firefighting capacity has been dangerously hampered by Department of Government Efficiency and Trump Administration layoffs, deferred resignations, and other early retirements and resignations just as climate change is extending the fire season,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The Forest Service\u2019s assertions about its readiness are contradicted not only by its own staff \u2014 a wildland firefighter in California quoted in the ProPublica report called the 99% figure \u201cgrossly inaccurate\u201d \u2014 but by its own statistics. In July, ProPublica reported that, according to agency data, its fire and aviation management program contained more than 4,500 active vacancies, including for such crucial primary firefighting positions as hotshots, dispatchers and engine captains. At the time, a spokesperson for the Agriculture Department disputed that the Forest Service had that many vacancies within its fire and aviation management program but did not provide data showing otherwise. A spokesperson for the Forest Service later claimed that ProPublica\u2019s figures were inaccurate, telling the High Country News, \u201cTheir numbers likely come from outdated org charts and unfunded positions.\u201d However, ProPublica excluded all unfunded positions from its analysis, and its data came from active agency organizational charts.<\/p>\n
When asked to support its claims that the agency\u2019s fire service is fully staffed, a spokesperson wrote: \u201cThe Forest Service is fully prepared and operational to protect individuals and communities from wildfires. The Forest Service has over 19,000 workers, both in and out of the Fire and Aviation Management group, who hold incident response qualifications.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n The Forest Service Claims It\u2019s Fully Staffed for a Worsening Fire Season. Data Shows Thousands of Unfilled Jobs.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n According to experts, the agency has long resisted providing a comprehensive and transparent breakdown of its wildland firefighting force. \u201cUnless Congress tells them to, they\u2019re not going to do a report of that magnitude,\u201d said Robert Kuhn, a former Forest Service official who between 2009 and 2011 co-authored such an assessment. Kuhn cited the cost and effort involved in analyzing a sprawling and complex agency. Earlier this year, Grassroots Wildland Firefighting, a labor advocacy organization, wrote, \u201cNone of the federal agencies have developed a modern formula for determining how many wildland firefighters and support personnel are truly needed to address 21st century issues.\u201d Most federal wildland firefighters work for the Forest Service, within the Department of Agriculture. In addition, the federal government employs thousands of wildland firefighters at four agencies in the Department of the Interior. President Donald Trump has ordered all of them to consolidate their wildland fire programs. Details about that unification have not been released.<\/p>\n Every year, the Forest Service reports that it has filled its ranks with what are known as primary firefighters. But according to current and former Forest Service employees, that assessment \u2014 the basis of the claim that the agency reached 99% of its hiring goal \u2014 is misleading on a number of levels. The Forest Service simply counts \u201coperational firefighters\u201d working within a specified pay range. That figure includes both temporary seasonal firefighters who have just joined the agency and experienced year-round veterans \u2014 but it does not distinguish between the two and therefore elides a great loss of institutional knowledge. In recent years, the agency has suffered an exodus of experienced firefighters. The agency\u2019s assessment also excludes both senior-level fire managers and crucial support staff. The public associates wildland firefighting with its most iconic figures: smokejumpers, hotshots and members of engine crews, who often are supported by aircraft dropping retardant. But the nation\u2019s wildland fire apparatus also includes, for example, human-resource specialists, ecologists, wilderness rangers, meteorologists, trails workers and other employees who possess qualifications allowing them to work on a fire line. Those qualifications are listed in what\u2019s known as a \u201cred card.\u201d An archaeologist could have a red card allowing them to, say, oversee the distribution of food at a fire camp.<\/p>\n A recently departed staffer received this email of Forest Service wildland firefighting job openings in August.<\/span><\/p>\n According to internal data reviewed in July by ProPublica, approximately 1,600 red-carded staff left the government this winter and spring. The Forest Service has claimed that the actual figure is 1,400. Garcia asked for a full accounting of DOGE\u2019s impact on the Forest Service, demanding \u201call documents and communications regarding staffing, hiring, reductions in force, the Deferred Resignation Program, or the \u2018Fork in the Road,\u2019 and firefighting resources and capacity at the Forest Service.\u201d<\/p>\n The agency\u2019s rosy public assessments of its own force have also been belied by its efforts to rehire the workers it forced out. In a July memo, the Forest Service\u2019s chief, Tom Schultz, allowed that the agency did not have enough resources and was now recruiting red-carded staff who had separated from the agency. More recently, emails reviewed by ProPublica show that, since July 22, the Forest Service has sent multiple recruiting notices to departed staff. The emails advertise dozens of openings for essential firefighting positions \u2014 such as dispatcher, engine captain and hotshot superintendent \u2014 in at least seven states. When asked about the emails, an agency spokesperson wrote, \u201cWe do have active recruitments out for FY26.\u201d<\/p>\n In his letter, Garcia requested that Rollins provide the oversight committee with \u201ca detailed and comprehensive accounting of current staffing and staffing changes at the Forest Service, including firefighting jobs\u201d since Jan. 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. The top Democrat on a House committee is demanding that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins account for discrepancies between her public statements about wildland firefighter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[680,1111,9311,1721,9312,9310,247,745,9313],"class_list":{"0":"post-15802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-calls","9":"tag-data","10":"tag-explanation","11":"tag-forest","12":"tag-inconsistent","13":"tag-lawmaker","14":"tag-propublica","15":"tag-service","16":"tag-staffing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Credit: <\/span>
\n Obtained and redacted by ProPublica
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