Shutdown Sows Confusion Across the U.S. Forest Service

This story was originally published by High Country News.

With the federal government in a shutdown, the U.S. Forest Service has paused much of the wildfire preparation and prevention work it does on its 193 million acres of national forestlands. 

A Forest Service contingency plan, current as of Sept. 30, calls for continued wildfire response. But the work necessary to reduce the fuels for massive wildfires, including prescribed burns, is on hold. Prescribed burns are an important tool to clear away excess vegetation, keep landscapes healthy and reduce the risk of destructive wildfires. But starting last week, some Forest Service staff were told not to conduct burns in preparation for a potential shutdown. 

“We were told, ‘No ignitions,’” said a Forest Service fire management officer who didn’t want to be named for fear of losing his job. “‘Don’t even start.’” 

The region where he works has upward of 10,000 acres on which the agency could conduct burns this fall when weather conditions allow safe, controlled burning. Last week, thousands of acres were considered ready to burn. “Windows are few and far between,” he said. “When you’re missing windows, it’s super disappointing.” 

The cooler, wetter fall season is an ideal time for prescribed burns and pile burning across the West. “It’s a huge deal,” said Bobbie Scopa, executive secretary for Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group for federal wildland firefighters. “This is the time of year you can get some really effective prescribed burning done.”

The agency’s shutdown plan notes that scientific experiments timed with prescribed fire may be “severely impacted” as a result.

Other significant activities will be delayed during the shutdown, including statewide forest inventories, processing special use permits and reimbursing partners like the states and nongovernmental organizations that do forest management work using federal funds. The plan notes that public access to recreation sites will be reduced, but it doesn’t offer specifics on any closures. 

The agency’s shutdown plan involves furloughing roughly 12,700, about 40%, of its almost 32,400 employees. Employees working in jobs deemed necessary to protect life and property —  wildland firefighting, law enforcement, emergency response and the upkeep of stock animals, among others — will work without pay, getting their back pay after the shutdown ends. Logging-related activities connected to President Donald Trump’s executive order to increase timber production will also continue. (Employees funded through means other than congressional appropriations will continue to be paid on time, according to the plan.) 

Who is furloughed, and who isn’t, remains uncertain, according to agency employees and observers interviewed by High Country News; it is not being carried out in an orderly or consistent fashion across the agency, they said. “There’s confusion going on within the folks working right now,” Scopa said. “It just contributes to really terrible morale, and things aren’t great anyway.” 

Scopa said that people who don’t have “wildland firefighter” in their job title but support firefighting operations in other ways — meteorologists and mapmakers, as well as those who do the administrative and logistical work needed for incident management teams — are being furloughed. “Without those people, the firefighters can’t be effective,” Scopa said.

Some of the chaos can likely be attributed to the lack of information distributed pre-shutdown. The fire management officer said he was stunned by the lack of information provided to staff so they could start planning before the shutdown became official. In the past, he’s been able to have a plan in place and know who was being furloughed and who was not several days before the funding lapsed. Not this time, though: The only communication he received before the lapse was a partisan email that blamed Democrats for the shutdown. (Such emails could violate the Hatch Act’s prohibition on partisan political activity by federal government employees, according to ethics experts.) “My entire career of I don’t know how many shutdowns, or threats of shutdowns, I’ve never had so much purposeful confusion thrown at us,” he said. 

Dozens of forest fires are burning nationwide, including 69 small, recently started ones and 20 large uncontained blazes, as of Oct. 1, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The Forest Service’s contingency plan calls for continuing to fight these and any new fires on national forests. But if the shutdown drags on for more than a week or two, firefighters will be faced with a choice: continue working without prompt pay — potentially missing a car, health insurance or rent payment — or quit and look for another job. Furloughed employees, meanwhile, would face their own challenges: not being able to work while being unable to file for unemployment or get a temporary job elsewhere. 

The fire management officer said that, historically, the situation is hardest on the youngest employees, who generally lack the financial security to miss pay periods. After the 35-day shutdown in 2018-2019, he said, many firefighters quit and never came back. “Fire season is hard enough without this,” said Rachel Granberg, a wildland firefighter in Washington and a National Federation of Federal Employees union steward. “I’m sure there are people who would rather have firefighters focused on how to put out fires rather than how to pay their bills.”