Oregon’s congressional Democrats raise concerns about federal wildfire response in the Northwest

Oregon’s congressional Democrats on Wednesday warned that federal agencies tasked with helping prevent and fight fires in the Northwest could be understaffed and underprepared going into the 2026 fire season.

Oregon’s U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, and Portland and Willamette Valley-area U.S. Reps. Suzanne Bonamici and Andrea Salinas left a Wednesday wildfire season briefing at the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland with “deep concerns” about federal agencies’ capacity to respond to what’s expected to be a long and severe fire season in the region. The center is the headquarters for a wildfire prevention and response network that includes nine state and federal agencies across the West.

At a news conference following the meeting, the lawmakers said budget cuts and the loss of staff at federal science and land management agencies during the last year — especially at the U.S. Forest Service, tasked with the largest share of federal wildland fire prevention and response — have created needless uncertainty and chaos.

“The rhetoric today is very different than it’s been in the past,” Wyden said of the annual briefing the lawmakers receive from the interagency officials. “The White House better wake up and look at the reality and the serious threat that Oregon is looking at.”

Oregon’s winter was among the warmest on record and snow-pack across the Northwest was one-third of normal levels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A potentially early El Niño weather pattern hitting in the summer rather than later in the year could further stir up temperatures and lightning storms into the fall.

The lawmakers’ concerns were a stark departure from the assurances Oregon’s new fire chief gave journalists and Gov. Tina Kotek just the day before at a briefing on the state’s preparedness for the 2026 season. Chief Forester Kacey KC said she had been in regular communication with fire leaders at the U.S. Forest Service, Department of the Interior and at the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service, and had been assured that their Oregon-based firefighting force hadn’t been cut.

Spokespersons for the U.S. Forest Service did not immediately respond to questions from the Capital Chronicle on Wednesday but spokespersons for the Department of the Interior said “there will be no gap in response capacity” during the fire season.

Wyden said he was glad Oregon’s fire officials are ready to handle the season on the 16 million acres of state land they oversee, but there’s a disconnect in what he and Congress see occurring among federal agencies, their leaders and their budgets, and what those officials are sharing with state leaders.

The federal government owns more than half of Oregon’s land — 32 million acres — including the responsibility to respond to wildfires on those acres. Because fire does not abide boundaries, preventing and fighting them requires coordination across local, state and federal agencies.

“We have a very serious threat, and this administration consistently serves up misrepresentation, and a failure to give the people of Oregon the details. And I’ll tell you, I left that room today saying that we are lucky to have all these people at the state level,” Wyden said. “We are unlucky to have an administration that can spend billions of dollars on war and not on the details to keep Oregonians safe.”

Cuts deeper than fire line

The lawmakers confirmed that Forest Service officials told them it was a good hiring year for seasonal firefighters, due in large part to wage increases passed by Congress last year. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, where the new Wildland Fire Service is housed, said in an email they expect to have about 5,700 wildland fire personnel this year, roughly equal to last year, as well as partnership agreements with more than 900 tribal wildland firefighters.

But the U.S. Forest Service has lost more than 1,400 employees who are also certified to respond to fires, Wyden said. President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for the next year includes $0 for forest and rangeland research at the Forest Service, and a 20% reduction in staff during 2026 — about 7,000 employees.

The consolidation of all firefighting under the Interior, and the shuttering and consolidation of 57 of 77 Forest Service research and development facilities has been a major concern for Merkley, who partnered with Alaska’s senior Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski to get U.S. Forest Chief Tom Schultz to agree to undertake a study of potential impacts.

“We’re hoping that gives us enough time to really carefully bring in experts and analyze this and not devastate the architecture of firefighting and fire prevention that has been built up over decades and destroyed in a single year,” Merkley said.

Salinas and Bonamici, both on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said they are most concerned by cuts to federal science agencies that help with weather forecasting, air quality monitoring, atmospheric monitoring via satellites and employees that clear debris to prevent fires that will impair firefighters’ efforts.

Officials at the interagency center said federal crews are dealing with a severe backlog of debris clearing and prescribed burning, and during the last year cleared about 35,000 fewer acres of debris from forest floors than they did in 2024, according to Salinas. She said they suggested relying on volunteers to clear up heavy fuels around popular wilderness trails in the absence of time and employees to take on the work.

“I know recreationalists are good stewards of the land, and they’d love to get out there, but we’re not going to solve this with volunteers. We need real personnel,” she said.

She added that cuts at federal agencies mean lawmakers lack details on good-neighbor authority agreements typically made in advance of a fire season between the federal government and states, private landowners and firefighting partners in Canada and Mexico.

“Is Canada really going to send down firefighters right now? They hate us. They hate Trump,” she said. “It’s all of those pieces.”

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