Trump Admin Returns to Full Wildfire Suppression Policy — SkimNews
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- Trump administration returned to "full suppression" of wildfires — shutting down every fire — reversing three decades of federal policy that had encouraged letting some wildfires play their natural role when they don't threaten people.
- U.S. wildfires in 2026 have already burned over 8 million acres across more than 53,000 incidents — about 3 million acres above the 10-year average — as nearly 73% of the Intermountain West faces severe to exceptional drought.
- Dan Dallas, a U.S. Forest Service incident commander, let a 2023 lightning-sparked fire burn across 50,000 acres on the Karuk Tribe's Six Rivers National Forest land to consume fuel, but he said such windows are vanishing as hotter, drier conditions stretch fire seasons.
- Megafires (over 100,000 acres, defined by severity and speed) now account for the bulk of federal firefighting spending, which costs 10 times more than 30 years ago — federal firefighters still contain 98% of ignitions, but the top 1% of fires drive more than 25% of acreage burned.
- An August 11 National Multi-Agency Coordinating memo warned "resource availability remains critically low, with commitments approaching all-time peak levels" as requests for firefighting help go unfulfilled.
- A 2015 U.S. Forest Service "Wildland Fire Management Futures" report concluded that continuing suppression "will fail across the whole range of plausible future conditions" and cause "fuel-filled landscapes to eventually reset catastrophically."
- A separate camp of foresters argues for mechanical thinning and loosening environmental regulations to open public lands to logging for fuel reduction, viewing letting wildfires burn as reckless under current volatile conditions.
Why it matters: Federal firefighting spending is now 10 times what it was 30 years ago, with megafires driving most of that cost. The Trump administration's full-suppression reversal puts federal policy directly at odds with the Forest Service's own 2015 warning that the approach will fail — meaning the very strategy meant to protect communities is building the fuel loads for the next catastrophic fire.
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