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The country's lead wildfire agency says it is ready for what's expected to be a busy summer in the West. The U.S. Forest Service says it is now fully staffed with seasonal wildland firefighters, but some Westerners are skeptical given the continuing downsizing of the agency. Here's NPR's Kirk Siegler.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: If you're worried about wildfires or just live anywhere in the West right now, chances are your algorithm is sending you a lot of videos like this.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (As character) Hey, kids, this is what you call a dumpster fire.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah. We agree, Smokey. The Trump administration's plan to dismantle the Forest Service, that's about as popular as burning a bunch of rubber tires.
SIEGLER: On Instagram, a Smokey Bear parody and a Montana conservationist named Land Tawney rip on Trump's controversial reorganization of the Forest Service, which comes as the agency lost almost 6,000 staff in the last year.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: And it couldn't come at a worse time. This is the start of what looks like to be another record year for wildfires in this country.
SIEGLER: The chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Tom Schultz, is quick to call commentary like this hyperbolic. I spoke with him at the agency's soon-to-be former headquarters in Washington, D.C. It's moving to Utah as part of the reorg (ph). The Trump administration says it wants to put the agency closer to the actual forests it manages.
TOM SCHULTZ: We do not intend to degrade our ability to fight fire this summer at all.
SIEGLER: Schultz is also quick to point out that the Forest Service is actually ahead of its hiring goals. More than 11,500 seasonal wildland firefighters are now on the job. Everyone, Schultz included, is on edge with the West being so scary dry.
SCHULTZ: I think the conditions we have are alarming, but what I would like to make sure that your listeners understand is that the Forest Service will be prepared for this season. We're ahead of where we have been in the last couple of years in terms of our hiring process.
SIEGLER: Schultz credits these solid numbers to recent pay raises for wildland firefighters and he says most of the reorg won't happen until after the summer fire season. The chief acknowledges morale is still a huge issue in his agency, especially among permanent staff. Working in fire is getting more dangerous, the fires and smoke getting worse due to climate change and overgrown forests, and experienced veterans have been lost to layoffs or buyouts. Many of these staffers hold or held what are called red cards, meaning they're also trained and ready to mobilize to major fires.
DAVE UPTHEGROVE: These decisions are not without consequence.
SIEGLER: Dave Upthegrove is Washington state's elected Public Lands commissioner.
UPTHEGROVE: These layoffs at the federal level are presenting risk as to our ability to respond to major wildfires.
SIEGLER: Upthegrove, a Democrat, is worried that the downsizing of the Forest Service will lead to a shortage of elite incident command teams that his state relies on.
UPTHEGROVE: So if we have a bad year for fire throughout the United States, it could mean a shortage of these federal teams, and so we are preparing contingency plans.
SIEGLER: There were similar anxieties going into last summer, which ended up being a relatively quiet season, partly just due to luck. No one's counting on that happening this summer. And because the wildfire crisis in the West just keeps getting worse, for years, there have actually been bipartisan calls to reorganize and modernize the U.S. Forest Service. Heath Heikkila is with a timber industry group called the American Forest Resource Council.
HEATH HEIKKILA: We in the West are seeing the catastrophic impacts of forest health and wildfire crisis. And what we've been doing in the last number of decades just doesn't really feel like it's been working at the Forest Service.
SIEGLER: Heikkila hopes the reorg will have an unintended effect, that of ramping up pressure to restore years of cuts to Forest Service funding that have spanned multiple administrations and jobs, from everything to timber harvest planners to wildfire prevention staff.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Boise.
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