Forest Service completed prescribed burns on 127,000 acres during shutdown, despite reduced workforce

Noah Haggerty, Los Angeles Times on Nov 17, 2025

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During the government shutdown, the U.S. Forest Service completed prescribed burns on more than 127,000 acres, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz announced in an internal memo welcoming back furloughed employees. During the same time frame in 2023 and 2024, the Forest Service completed a comparable amount of work, indicating the agency managed to take advantage of prime weather for burns even with a reduced workforce.

“Despite the disruption, we accomplished a great deal together,” the memo, first reported by the Hotshot Wake Up and verified by the Los Angeles Times, said. “We advanced timber sales that strengthen local economies, kept recreation sites open and safe for public enjoyment, and carried out critical wildfire response and active management work.”

By comparison, the Forest Service completed about 200,000 acres of prescribed burns in 2023 from Oct. 1 through Nov. 12 — the same span as the 2025 shutdown — and in 2024, it burned roughly 90,000 acres during that time frame, according to a Forest Service database that tracks hazardous fuel treatment work.

The latest contingency plan for the Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting entity in the country — called for continuing essential work during a shutdown, including responding to and suppressing wildfires.

The plan also involves furloughing roughly 30% of the service’s workforce, including those who oversee forest-use permit processing and public recreation, as well as researchers studying forest health and the timber market. Yet fuel treatment work, such as prescribed burning and mechanically thinning forests, is conducted by many of the same personnel responsible for putting out fires — the part of the workforce that avoided the furloughs.

That was important, given that significant fire activity across the West in 2024 inhibited the Forest Service from reducing wildfire risk on as many acres. So, this year, the Forest Service has been playing catch-up.

However, Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit representing current and former federal firefighters, found in October that Forest Service fuel management work in 2025 was down by 38% compared with recent years. The organization said that downturn was largely due to staff and resource cuts championed by President Trump’s cost-cutting team at the start of his second administration.

The Forest Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has challenged the federal government to match state investments in wildfire risk reduction work, and in July even sent the White House a draft executive order that Newsom said would accomplish exactly that.

In 2021, the state and U.S. Forest Service agreed to ramp up their yearly fuel treatment work in California to 500,000 acres each by 2025.

In 2023, the most recent year both state and federal data are available, the state reached 415,000 acres, and the Forest Service reached 311,000, according to a state dashboard. From 2021 to 2024, the state invested $4.3 billion to complete that work, whereas the Forest Service invested $3.1 billion.

This past weekend’s rain could mark an early start to prescribed-burn season in Southern California — home to a handful of national forests, including the Los Angeles and San Bernardino forests — as federal employees return to work until at least the end of January, when the agreed-upon funding is set to expire.

“I’m profoundly grateful to welcome our furloughed employees back as the government reopens,” Schultz said in the memo. “I look forward to getting the entire team back together to continue and build upon the work that we’ve begun this new fiscal year.”

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