Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Joe Neguse (D-Co 2)
“Congress has to work together to advance a comprehensive approach to addressing the wildfire crisis.”
Washington, D.C. — In case you missed it, Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse, Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands, stood alongside federal lawmakers and current and former wildland firefighters as they called on Congress to take action amid an already historic wildfire year.
The group criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle federal agencies responsible for addressing wildfire challenges across the country, including the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). They also emphasized the need for Congress to advance legislation that protects communities, strengthens land resilience, and provides adequate support for the people and programs leading wildfire prevention, preparedness, mitigation, and suppression efforts.
In addition to Neguse, Natural Resources Ranking Member Jared Huffman (CA-02) and Representatives Maxine Dexter (OR-03), Josh Harder (CA-09), Jimmy Panetta (CA-19), and Janelle Bynum (OR-05) pledged to stand up for America’s public lands and national forests by investing in the workforce, resources, and partnerships needed to protect communities from increasingly severe wildfires.
“The United States is already experiencing its worst wildfire year in nearly a decade. Almost 3 million acres burned. Record-breaking drought conditions in Colorado, and far beyond. Rising temperatures,” said Congressman Neguse. “Unfortunately, tragically, right now, there are federal agencies responsible for key wildfire prevention, mitigation, and management programs that are experiencing irresponsible and reckless staffing and budget cuts that have dramatically, in my view, worsened working conditions for our wildland firefighters—creating unsustainable workloads, inadequate pay and benefits, and a dwindling trust in agency leadership—leading to three out of every four active wildland firefighters at the federal level considering leaving the workforce. This cannot stand. Congress has to intervene, and we have to work together to advance, as I said, a comprehensive approach to addressing the wildfire crisis.”
“The federal government should be taking urgent action—right now. And at the very least, we shouldn’t be making things worse. But that’s not the case under this administration. This administration has been firing staff, dismantling agencies, attacking the science that informs firefighting efforts. Public lands, communities, and firefighters have been pushed to the brink—and as you’ve heard from several people already, we’re heading into what may be one of the worst fire seasons in recent history. We have to do better. We must do better, and Democrats under the leadership and my colleague Joe Neguse and the other colleagues, you see with me here today, believe that we have the ideas ready to go to help us meet this moment. Policies that can keep our communities safe, our lands resilient, and our workforce strong. Bills to combat climate change, to make wildfires less extreme in the first place. Bills to make sure firefighters have good pay, healthcare, and the equipment that they need,” said Congressman Huffman.
“Protecting wildland firefighters is one of my top priorities in Congress, because I know exactly what’s at stake. That is why I’m proud to announce forthcoming legislation that I developed in direct partnership with our firefighters, with NFFE, and with health experts who want to close these gaps. This legislation is built around a simple idea: protecting firefighters’ health should be treated as operational certainty, not an afterthought. It strengthens coordination across the federal government, makes permanent the Wildland Firefighters Health and Well-Being program, directs OSHA to develop occupational health standards specifically tailored to the risks wildland firefighters face, and invests in the research needed to optimize respiratory protection in the field,” said Congresswoman Dexter, M.D. “The firefighters standing behind me have done their job. They have protected our communities. They have protected our forests. They have protected our families. Now it’s time for us to do our job and protect theirs.”
“There are two things that we really need to be able to fight these fires better. One, we need to prepare and prevent. We need to do a lot more fuel management than we’re doing right now. And two, we need more people. We need the researchers. We need the scientists. And of course, we need the frontline firefighters that are out there risking their lives in these fires, running to the danger to keep our homes and community safe. Right now, we’re working backwards on both of those issues,” said Congressman Harder. “We have to keep our duty and our promise to those who stand between our families and disaster.”
“I’m not here just to talk about the problems. I’m here to put forward solutions. It’s why I support Representative Neguse’s bipartisan legislation, the Wildfire Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act, which will increase and protect the pay we authorized in the bipartisan Infrastructure, Jobs and Investment Act. It’s also why I authored and introduced the Support Our Firefighters Act, so that we can permanently lift the cap on overtime pay for federal firefighters and make sure there is a proper rest and recuperation after the fire fight,” said Congressman Panetta. “I realized that in Washington, D.C., yes, of course, especially with this administration, we see a lot of disagreement. We see a lot of division. But I believe that there are certain solutions. There are bills out there that we’ve worked, yes, and even in a bipartisan basis, like the ones I’ve talked about that actually demonstrate that we agree that it’s not just federal firefighters who should get paid, but that their pay should be equal and commensurate with the dangers that they face, the service that they provide, and the protection that they give to us, to our communities, to our home, and absolutely, to the safety for our families.”
“All of us standing here today know wildfires pose more and more of a threat to our communities each year. And as representatives from states with dangerous wildfire seasons, we understand how important it is to address this threat early and that there’s no reason for this to be a partisan issue,” said Congresswoman Bynum. “I’ve worked across the aisle to address this issue by introducing and passing bills to prevent drones from delaying wildfire response, and also to help victims rebuild after disaster strikes. But the truth is, if we’re not adequately prepared, those efforts can only go so far. And so now, now is not the time to make life harder on our firefighters and our families. Now is not the time to ask firefighters to do more with less. And now is not the time for Washington to take its eye off the ball.”
The Members spoke alongside current and former federal wildland firefighters and USFS researchers, as well as representatives from the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE).
“I’m calling on members of Congress to do your job. Pump the brakes on this out-of-control administration before another cherished institution, the US Forest Service, is destroyed,” said Randy Erwin, National President, National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE). “Once disrupted, that investment is lost—lost forever. The taxpayers’ investment made over decades lost and gone, you know, for no reason whatsoever. And this is not efficiency, it is the reckless destruction of institutional knowledge, scientific capacity and operational readiness. If this demolition of the Forest Service is allowed to happen, it will be a national travesty that we will regret for generations.”
“We are currently witnessing the biggest threat to our public lands in our lifetime. The actions that are currently taking place by this administration and the agencies that they control are jeopardizing the safety of American communities and the preservation of our public lands and natural resources,” said Max Alonzo, National Secretary-Treasurer, NFFE. “They’re slashing budgets. They’re firing critical employees. They’re forcing these workers to move across the country or just quit their careers that they’ve spent a lifetime investing into…As we go into one of the possibly the roughest years of fire that we’ve seen in decades. This is not what efficiency looks like, okay. This is what it looks like when you are setting something up to fail.”
“When they come for one of us, they come for all of us—the land steward, the scientist, the firefighter, the colleague three doors down whose name is on the list to be cut,” said Genny Koytk, President, NFFE Forest Service Council, USFS Environmental Services. “Today, I ask you all, especially our elected representatives, to call to action…And to our Senators and Congressional Representatives, please demand the answers and hard facts about the reorganization and what [the impacts] will have on our mission. Demand clear sources of funding that meet your congressionally appropriated intended for those funds, require independent cost benefit analysis before implemented. And please, as you did last year, take a hard look at the 2027 budget, and keep our Forest Service funded.”
“We do this job because we love our public lands. I don’t see how cutting budgets for the Forest Service, reorganizing, shuffling people around and then potentially pulling firefighters out of the biggest wildland fire agency and putting them under DOI is actually going to make anything more efficient. It seems like it’s just a step-by-step road towards dismantling the agencies that care for our public lands. And I know every single person that works for the federal government, within these agencies, as well as a majority of the public, wants to keep our public lands. They want them to be run efficiently,” said Justin Brown, Wildland Firefighter, USFS, Lassen National Forest, CA.
“The public lands, I think, should be, basically, you know, managed for future generations. It’s not just for us. This is for future generations to ensure that we have, you know, proper forest management, clean water, clean air, things that Congress is also very, very interested in. They want this as well. And I think that we should get more bipartisan support for this. And, yeah, we just cannot let [Forest Service research] fall to the wayside. It’s just too important for our management and for the American public and for all future generations,” said Buzz Hettick, Biological Scientist, USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station.
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