Forest chief says losing 5,000 employees won’t impact fire season response. Many federal firefighters disagree

The head of the lead federal agency tasked with fighting wildfires said it is ready for this summer’s fire season despite shedding thousands of employees in recent months, projecting a confidence level not shared by much of his workforce. 

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz acknowledged his agency has shed 4,200 through an extended paid leave program and another 600 with early retirements, though he said efforts to bring some of those employees back to work and shift others around to fill “critical positions” will ensure its readiness. USFS has all the staff it requires for fire season, Schultz told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, even as he conceded some workforce issues still require resolutions. 

The Forest Service has 11,000 firefighters on board, Schultz said, just below the 11,900 the agency employed last fire season. It and its federal partners have 37 incident management teams that deploy to large-scale fires to provide support services, he added, shy of the 42 teams it had in 2024. 

USFS has incentivized employees to leave through the deferred resignation program—which has enabled staffers to sit on paid administrative leave through September before leaving government—and other separation perks. While firefighters were exempt from those offers, other agency personnel with “red cards”—employees who hold certifications for firefighting duties and deploy as needed to wildfires—left in droves. Last week, the service asked those 1,400 employees to volunteer to return for the current fire season. 

It has also reassigned between 600 and 700 employees to move laterally to serve in critical areas, Schultz said. 

“I do believe they're ready,” the chief told Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “When it comes to the wildfire season, yes ma'am, we do have the critical folks in place.” 

Several USFS firefighters questioned that assumption to Government Executive, with one saying the message from leadership at a recent town hall was essentially that everyone needed to “pitch in and do twice as much with half the people.” The lateral movements, the employee said, only serves to create new shortages in other locations. 

“We are not ready,” the firefighter said. “The institutional knowledge of older people who left and the numbers of skilled people who left from all disciplines is crippling.” 

That person noted that some of the newer hires who were originally fired in their probationary periods opted not to come back when a court ordered the Agriculture Department to rehire them.   

Multiple additional USFS firefighters said the agency’s capacity would be stretched thin if the number of fires escalates later this summer. 

“As soon as fire season picks up, it could get interesting,” one employee said. 

Lawmakers and employees noted that staffing for firefighters and “red card” holders amounted to only one part of the equation, as those staff depend on support personnel who have left the agency in large numbers. Bobbie Scopa, a long-time federal firefighter and former USFS operations section chief who now advocates for her former colleagues as part of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, noted that fire personnel cannot carry out their duties if there is insufficient staff to process pay or ensure contracts are in place to buy new trucks, get fuel, replace tires and complete repairs.

“There is no doubt they’re going to be understaffed, particularly with [incident management teams] and these support personnel,” Scopa said. 

USFS employees previously sounded that alarm that new layers of review by USDA and the Department of Government Efficiency led to contract renewals for areas ranging from janitorial services to firefighting equipment to take as long as six weeks to complete when it previously took minutes. 

Scopa added the plan to recall those who already took deferred resignations could run into hurdles, as those employees will still need to renew their trainings, complete physical fitness tests and take other steps to ready themselves for fire season. Staff that typically aid in those efforts are, in many cases, already deployed to fires or otherwise unavailable to provide that assistance, she said.

Steve Guitierrez, a long-time federal firefighter who represents his colleagues through the National Federation of Federal Employees, was also skeptical of Schultz’s plans. 

“I find it difficult to make that without all those employees that we will be fully staffed for this fire season,” Guitierrez said. “We were already low on numbers to begin with.”  

Schultz also ran into bipartisan pushback during his testimony. 

“The morale is shot,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who chaired the hearing, said of USFS. “People are trying to figure it out and they’re proud of the work they’re doing, but it is hard on them right now.” 

Murray told Schultz the agency's staffing approach incentivizing people to leave—in part by threatening layoffs and sending as many as 20 emails per day to staff to encourage them to take separation packages—only to then reassign, rehire or re-solicit staff was “really ridiculous.” She noted that virtually every USFS employee supports firefighting in some capacity. 

“The stakes are life and death here and it really raises serious alarms about this agency being ready for this critical fire season,” Murray said. “It feels like we are not prepared for this wildfire season. You just said we were. We'll see what happens. But I fear I'm going to be right.” 

The Trump administration proposed slashing USFS staffing by 26% in its fiscal 2026 budget proposal, not accounting for a request to consolidate federal firefighting within the Interior Department. One employee said the prospect of layoffs still looms—USDA is currently facing a court injunction barring those from taking place—and uncertainty remains about transfers and reassignments. 

An Interior employee who holds a red card said it appears large numbers of employees whose main jobs are in areas like human resources but who deploy to large wildfires will be subject to the department's likely upcoming reductions in force, which will significantly diminish federal firefighting efforts.

All of that led Scopa to suggest Schultz was painting too rosy a picture. 

“There are not too many people who are not worried about this fire season, so he would be in the minority on that,” she said of his optimism. “There’s great potential for people getting killed, communities burning down and we have a chief saying, ‘Everything’s going to be great this year.’”