The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior have signed a joint memo on wildfire preparedness to increase readiness this wildfire season.
This season is expected to be above normal. Secretary Brooke Rollins says that the two departments will provide the resources needed to ensure the Forest Service has the strongest and most prepared firefighting force in the world.
The announcement comes as the Trump administration hopes to merge the government’s wildland fighting efforts into a single agency.
Right now, firefighting efforts are split among five different agencies and two departments. Trump’s plan would combine all of those into a single “Federal Wildland Fire Service,” which would fall under the Interior Department.
The merger would result in the shifting of thousands of personnel from the U.S. Forest Service and to the new agency in the middle of fire season.
