A group of Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to halt creation of a consolidated federal wildland fire service until he can explain how it improves on existing firefighting resources. This story also appeared in Mountain Jo urnal The letter comes as a transcontinental winter storm prompted 14 fire warnings across the High Plains on Tuesday. One of those, the Ranger Road Fire, had burned 145,000 acres in a 65-mile run across Oklahoma and Kansas, according to internet wildfire monitor Watch Duty. Montana also reported a new fire on February 17, which had burned five acres outside Hardin east of Billings as of Wednesday. “We are concerned that the [Department of Interior] is advancing a rapid and consequential restructuring of wildfire management without adequate analysis, transparency, or planning to prevent disruption during what is expected to be a significant fire season or to safeguard long-term wildfire preparedness,” the Congress members wrote. “This sweeping consolidation has been announced without providing an implementation plan that outlines how operational continuity will be ensured in the short term, or how restructuring will avoid long-term disruption to wildfire preparedness, response, and recovery.” Federal firefighting is divided into two main groups. The U.S. Forest Service, within the Department of Agriculture, handles more than two-thirds of the personnel, contracting and operations for fighting fires on public lands. The Interior Department handles the rest through several sub-agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The current Watch Duty wildfire map, as of Wednesday Feb. 18 at 5 p.m. MST. Last month, Burgum ordered the consolidation of all the Interior firefighting operations into a single Wildland Fire Service. That move fell short of plans announced in 2025 for a complete overhaul of federal firefighting which would include moving Forest Service resources over to Interior. But Congress balked. Instead, it called for studies examining how such a consolidation might improve wildfire response. The letter, signed by 11 high-ranking Democrats as of press time, pointed out that Congress refused to fund that plan and the 2026 budget “does not authorize the transfer of U.S. Forest Service firefighting functions to the Department of the Interior. Any such transfer would require explicit congressional authorization and approval.” Several of those senators were members of the committees overseeing public lands management, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mark Kelly of Arizona. It followed with 13 questions to Burgum, including how he planned to pay for the Interior-side reorganization and operations, how land managers would coordinate their work with firefighters in a separate agency, who was in charge of preventative fire treatments such as prescribed burning operations, and how much Interior had kept state, tribal and local firefighters apprised of the changes. The letter writers acknowledged that consolidation might be effective. But they warned the Interior proposal risked distracting the agencies from their regular missions without any plan to replace those capabilities. And they added that the BLM “has already lost thousands of employees through DOGE’s mismanagement,” and would see another 3,000 personnel shift to firefighting. That would total nearly half the Interior workforce present before the Trump administration started its cuts last January. Much of Greater Yellowstone and Montana, especially at mid to low elevations has remained dry for much of the 2026 winter. A wildfire started near Hardin, Montana, on Feb. 17 and had burned 5 acres by Feb. 18. The mountains near Absarokee, Montana, pictured here, were bare in late 2025. Credit: Joseph T. O'Connor “Wildfire seasons are getting longer and more dangerous with each passing year,” the letter stated. “How will the Department ensure that the readiness of DOI firefighters, who make up roughly 30% of the federal wildland firefighting workforce, will not be further undermined by the consolidation?” An Interior press officer told Mountain Journal in an email on Wednesday that the department would keep working with Congress. But delaying needed modernization would do more to strengthen bureaucracy than wildfire preparedness. “The claim that wildfire operations are being disrupted is false,” the press officer wrote. “Firefighters remain in place. Aviation assets are deployed. Incident command structures are unchanged. Modernizing leadership in Washington does not pause fire response in the field.” Interior’s firefighting programs have suffered from fragmented structures that slow decision-making, according to the press officer, adding that a consolidated leadership would fix that. “Reform is not reckless,” the press officer wrote. “Failing to fix inefficiencies would be.” Mountain Journal also sent detailed questions to Montana’s congressional delegation seeking response to the letter. This story will be updated as additional information becomes available. The post Congressional Democrats warn Interior Dept. wildfire plan lacks details appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less