U.S. Department of Interior Launches U.S. Wildland Fire Service

January 2026 – The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) established the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service, which consolidates wildland fire management across the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Office of Aviation Services, Office of Wildland Fire, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to streamline wildfire prevention, response, and recovery efforts across public lands administered by DOI. The U.S. Wildland Fire Service works to reduce wildfire risk through proactive fuels management; create fire-resilient landscapes; advance wildland fire science and technology; promote fire-adapted communities; and respond to wildfires in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service and Tribal, state and local partners.

The new service was created following Executive Order 14308, Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response, which directs federal agencies to streamline and modernize wildland fire management nationwide and the DOI Secretary’s Order 3443, Elevating and Unifying DOI’s Wildland Fire Management Program, which directs the establishment of U.S. Wildland Fire Service within the Interior Department. The service will provide wildland fire management on over 500 million acres of public and Tribal lands across the nation, employ 5,780 federal wildland fire personnel annually,  and supports approximately 900 tribal wildland fire personnel.