ASHEVILLE, N.C. — On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order that will throw wildland firefighting forces into confusion and drain resources from the use of controlled burns that prevent future wildfires. The move will have a drastic impact on our national parks, national forests, and national wildlife refuges and the communities that rely on them. 

Both the Department of Interior, through the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, and the Department of Agriculture, through the Forest Service, are currently responsible for fighting dangerous fires and restoring beneficial fires on our landscapes. But this order aims to “consolidate” their firefighting forces, with no clarity or accountability for who is in charge. The move comes on the heels of drastic staff reductions, including the loss of thousands of trained firefighters, in these same agencies. 

The order emphasizes outdated fire suppression strategies, which will lead to larger and more intense wildfires in the future. It will also siphon prescribed fire resources away from agencies, instead dedicating them to wildfire suppression. These moves will hurt public lands where proactive prescribed burns are needed for ecological restoration and wildfire prevention, especially in the South. 

“Logging and fire suppression are what got us into this mess in the first place, and this order is more evidence that this administration is going to repeat the mistakes of the past,” Sam Evans, Leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s National Forest and Parks Program, said. “Instead of stripping our public lands agencies’ ability to fight fires and pushing irresponsible fire suppression tactics, the administration should be building on the progress we’ve started to make on restoring fire to its natural role on the landscape, which will better protect our communities and our wildlife in the future.”

The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region’s air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 200, including more than 130 legal and policy experts, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.