…I recently wrote about how the Trump administration’s efforts to reorganize the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and shutter 57 of its 77 research and development (R&D) facilities isn’t really about efficiency—it’s about hollowing out another science agency whose mission is to protect people, places, and livelihoods. The Forest Service has since updated its website to qualify that these R&D closures are “possible” but not a foregone conclusion. Yet, as details emerge, one thing is painfully clear: this plan would dismantle the world’s premier—and largest—wildfire research agency when wildfire risk, climate impacts, and economic losses are accelerating. Given increasing severity of wildfires, losing this research would diminish our understanding of managing forests under climate change. Trump’s plans to end climate studies, allowing forest fuel loads to build and diseases to spread, leaves our hands tied as we try to prevent wildfires without the benefit of evidence-based science.