©US Forest Service

Federal budget documents confirm the Trump administration’s intention to strip U.S. Forest Service wildfire duties and transferring them to a centralized wildland fire service housed in the Department of Interior. Interior’s Budget In Brief report was released June 2. It includes a six-page document describing the mission of a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. And it requests $6.55 billion for operations and a reserve fund in Fiscal Year 2026. Congress would have to pass new laws in addition to approving President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget for the change to take place. That means it won’t affect wildland firefighting this summer, which has already tallied 29,694 incidents burning 1.2 million acres. The proposal also has some government watchdogs speculating it could lead to the wholesale absorption of the Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture, into Interior and its Bureau of Land Management.