Trump is taking aim at forest and wildfire research just as the West is poised to burn
Posted by Christopher Blackwell on June 12, 2026, 3:11 pm
Trump is taking aim at forest and wildfire research just as the West is poised to burn
SEATTLE — Few public universities get more federal research funding than the University of Washington.
So, as President Trump has already canceled or suspended about a quarter of all funding for the National Science Foundation and National Institutes for Health, the atmosphere on this leafy Seattle campus is tense.
The anxiety is even trickling down to lower-profile places once considered safe from White House politics, like UW's School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Here, newly proposed U.S. Forest Service funding cuts and a larger reorganization of the agency would have immediate consequences as the West looks poised for an epic summer of wildfires and smoke.
"We have a wildfire crisis in the West [and] in the United States," says Ernesto Alvarado, a fire ecologist and associate professor at the school.
Alvarado is looking at a giant map of the U.S. on his computer. It shows where wildfire smoke is, where it's forecast to drift, as well as the harmful particulates in it. He zooms in on a wildfire burning in New Mexico, where the smoke is dense and might be of concern for any immunocompromised people in the area.
"If someone is living in Ruidoso, New Mexico, they can go and see where the smoke is going to," Alvarado says, moving his mouse from one monitoring station to the next.
Alvarado and U.S. Forest Service colleagues at the nearby Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab created this map. It's updated in real time with the help of a team of grad students and IT staff here at UW.
"We need to bring new technology fast," Alvarado says.
This taxpayer-funded tech is now widely used by governments, elite firefighting teams and popular commercial apps that people rely on when the smoke gets bad. It's the product, Alvarado says, of institutional knowledge developed through years of Forest Service research into smoke and fires. He says that unlike a university that might get a grant for a few years of study, the USFS work spans decades.
"You are integrating the knowledge and the science available for decades by one team, in Seattle," he says. Fire scientists worry critical research is being gutted
But the Seattle smoke lab is now on a list of 56 out of 90 research stations identified for closure. It's part of the Trump administration's controversial Forest Service reorganization, which includes relocating its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Utah and consolidating regional offices into individual state facilities.
All of this has Morgan Varner worried. He was a fire behavior scientist at the Seattle smoke lab until 2019.
"There's a haphazard to it that I think is troubling from a scientist standpoint," Varner says.
Current lab employees did not respond to interview requests. But Varner doubts most of the staff here will be willing to relocate or take other jobs elsewhere in the agency. He says the lab was put in Seattle due to its international airport and major research university.
"OK, so I need you to help me change the narrative, we aren't closing research," Schultz says. "Research is important — science is extremely important — in this organization."
But Schultz also says the Forest Service has a $3 billion deferred maintenance backlog, and closing or consolidating buildings that house some research stations will save money. In some cases, he adds, it might just be scientists moving to a nearby state office or to another location within commuting distance.
"This administration is trying to be thoughtful as we move forward," Schultz says. "We involve the employees in so much of our discussions. But we've got to get our budget into control. We knew we had a big shortfall coming in."
Even as Chief Schultz is adamant that science is still a priority, his boss President Trump's proposed budget for the Forest Service zeros out all research and development funding. Congress ultimately sets the agency's budget, and recent Capitol Hill hearings showed there's bipartisan opposition to the president's plan.
"It was zeroed out in the '26 budget and zeroed out in the '27 budget [but] Congress did something different," Schultz says. "We've built an organizational structure based on what Congress has funded us to do. And if Congress were to adopt the president's budget, then we will pivot accordingly."
Some state officials in the West say the Trump administration's plans are secretive
If Congress were to approve President Trump's proposed budget for the agency, the U.S. Forest Service would be a skeleton of its former self, just as climate change is accelerating the frequency and severity of wildfires in the U.S. The agency already lost thousands of staff last year to layoffs, buyouts and early retirement due to President Trump's DOGE team.
Westerners working at research universities are nervous, as are people in small towns that depend on the USFS for everything from jobs to fighting fires to forecasting smoke.
One recent morning in Washington state, Dave Upthegrove, the elected public lands commissioner, was at a ceremony to mark the reopening of a popular trailhead near the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the mountains east of Seattle. Washington’s public lands commissioner, Dave Upthegrove, says the state relies directly on U.S. Forest Service fire and smoke research to coordinate its wildfire suppression response.
Washington's public lands commissioner, Dave Upthegrove, says the state relies directly on U.S. Forest Service fire and smoke research to coordinate its wildfire suppression response. Kirk Siegler/NPR
"The research that's being done at these labs in Washington state helps inform our wildfire response and contributes to improving public safety for people throughout the state of Washington, particularly in rural areas," Upthegrove says.
Upthegrove, a Democrat, says his state was initially optimistic that the Forest Service reorganization might lead to better cooperation on public lands issues, namely the proposal to have an individual state director similar to the structure of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The Washington Department of Natural Resources was also initially briefed often by the Forest Service and assured that critical research would not be affected by the reorganization.
"But recently the Forest Service has gone radio silent, and we've not been able to get updates on the progress and the status and the outcome of this work, so we are nervous," Upthegrove says.
Nervous, he says, as these lush Pacific Northwest woods — once thought immune from major fires — could be flammable or at least choked in smoke in a matter of weeks.
I'm sure there were no fraudulent scams' and friends of congressmen and senators getting any kind of benefits from any of this so-called research...right, Chris? I mean, these past and current leaders are the most honest people in the entire world ...right, Chris?
Spector, much more corruption involved in tearing down the government and letting or billionaires do whatever they want with no fear of ever being caught. Our wealthiest business people are also our biggest crooks, and have always been, those that can buy and sell our politicians and the rest of our government. The percentage of wealth tied up by the wealthiest few is three times the level of corruption of the so called Gilded Age. It is corruption at the top of society that always kills any civilization.
Republicans want to spend $1 billion on the Whitehouse ballroom
Remember that he promised it was financed by private money. He rushed into the project without actually having the money and the alleged backers backed off of providing the money.
Note how the cost estimates kept climbing. First it was going to be $100,000,000, then it was going to be $400,000,000, and now they are claiming that the taxpayers are going to pay $1,000,000,000 whether they want to or not. Meanwhile, it will make such a popular terrorist target, be the terrorist are foreign or domestic.
Those big glass windows, and a thousand big important people attending big parties there. Drones make terrorism both easier and far cheaper. Look at the problem they are creating for our military bases in the Middle East, for Israel, and even for Russia damagewise.
Nowhere near what we have seen in the last decade or so. Cutting back on the Forest Service is rather insane. Making the government nonfunctional is not going to help us survive, quite the opposite.
It's rare to see the West burn with politicians ...
Such may cause one to question the end goal of governmental control as greater power and wealth are placed in the hands of the fewer, and not with the many not near as rich or powerful.
Are Bezos and Gates and Musk and men like Stapleton setting the stage and acting as role model for someone of these and wanna-bees like Donald Trump and you n me n Bobby McGee ?
Perhaps you prefer an Uberfunctional Gub'mint instead of one...
So far none of the cuts have reduced costs, only increased the costs of the problems created by reckless slashing, often forcing the government to rehire the very people they fired. None of them are picked for their experience in the field, only for being yes men for the President.
I hope you don't mind that I don't take your word on that...