The Trump administration’s deep cuts in staffing at the Forest Service are hampering the agency’s ability to stave off wildfires and safeguard the health of national forests, policy experts told a Senate panel Thursday.
Testifying at a hearing on wildfire legislation, two witnesses turned instead to the Trump administration’s mass firings — which have only just begun. Already, they said, the types of work such legislation is meant to promote is grinding to a halt.
“They don’t have the staff on the ground to do these projects,” Jonathan Houck, a county commissioner in Gunnison County, Colorado, said at the hearing of the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation, Forestry, Natural Resources and Biotechnology.
The subcommittee called the hearing to discuss proposed legislation called the “Fix Our Forests Act,” which would speed environmental reviews in designated areas deemed at highest risk of wildfire so that forest thinning and related work could be accelerated.
