USFS firefighters contradict chief's 'fully staffed' claims
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- Nine USFS firefighters told the Guardian the agency is fighting thousands of fires with skeleton crews, saying leadership gaps in taskforce leaders, division supervisors, and heavy equipment bosses have created dangerous bottlenecks — directly contradicting Chief Tom Schultz's July congressional testimony that the workforce is 'stronger than at any point in recent years' and 'fully staffed and equipped.'
- The USFS lost nearly half its permanent employees between 2021 and 2024, then roughly 20% more during the Trump administration's 2025 mass-firing spree, which hit support roles that fire crews now desperately need to fill.
- Last year USFS firefighters logged more than 1,000 hours of overtime each — the equivalent of cramming five extra months of work into an already brutal season — and internal data shared with the Guardian shows more than 600 resource requests went unfilled during a single 72-hour period last week, including 265 unfilled requests for aircraft, crews, and equipment.
- The USFS points to a flat 11,300-position hiring goal as its staffing benchmark and has refused to disclose breakdowns in actual staffing totals even after repeated requests from journalists and members of Congress.
- Inter-agency complex-incident management teams have shrunk from 46 in 2023 to just 38 now, and Oregon state Senator Mike McLane confirmed that private contract resources sat idle during Oregon's fires this summer because there weren't enough qualified managers to supervise them.
- The 2025 wildfire season has been classified at Preparedness Level 5 — the highest possible resource deployment level — since July 18, with more than 49,200 wildfires burning over 7.2 million acres nationwide, eclipsing 10-year averages.
- A March survey by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and the National Federation of Federal Employees found only a quarter of federal firefighters said their unit was fully staffed, more than half had to cancel prescribed burning projects due to shortages, and a fifth reported unqualified personnel filling vacant positions.
Why it matters: The gap between USFS leadership's public messaging and what firefighters on the ground describe isn't just spin — it has measurable consequences: prescribed burns that prevent catastrophic fires dropped 35% nationally last year, private contractors sat idle in Oregon because no qualified supervisors were available, and Preparedness Level 5 has been in effect continuously since July 18. With wildfire risks extending into autumn and fire seasons growing more destructive, the USFS's 11,300-position benchmark appears to be a political floor, not an operational one.
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