More than 52,000 wildfires have burned some 8.2 million acres across the United States this year, according to reporting by Truthout, part of a pattern that fire experts describe as a self-reinforcing spiral. Decades of aggressive suppression allowed dead wood and dense undergrowth to accumulate in forests. Climate change is now turning that fuel into faster, larger and more destructive fires. And the federal system built to fight them is being stretched thinner rather than strengthened.

Grist, the US environmental outlet that first reported on the trend, found that fire-driven tree cover loss globally has nearly doubled since the early 2000s. The United States ranks third worldwide for forest loss attributable to fire between 2001 and 2019, behind only Russia and Canada, based on Global Forest Watch data analysed with the University of Maryland.

A budget that never catches up

The US has overspent its federal wildfire-fighting budget in most years since 2002, according to Grist’s review of federal records. A recent fire season alone burned more than 7.9 million acres. As fires grow into so-called megafires that can jump highways and throw embers roughly a mile ahead of the flame front, according to wildfire researcher Dan Kulakowski, the cost of suppression keeps rising alongside the damage itself.

If this is a war, we’re gonna spend a lot of money, we’re gonna take a lot of casualties, and we’re gonna lose.

That assessment comes from Stephen J. Pyne, a fire historian, in comments reported by Slate. It captures what several experts describe as the central problem: firefighting technology and prevention methods designed for typical wildfires are no longer matched to the scale of today’s extreme events.

Cuts under the Trump administration

Rather than expanding capacity, the federal government has reduced it. The US Forest Service has shed about 16% of its workforce since January 2025, and the acreage treated with prescribed burns and other fuel-reduction work has dropped by roughly 35%, according to Truthout. The Trump administration also consolidated four separate wildland firefighting agencies into a single new body, the US Wildland Fire Service, a reorganisation that critics say has left fewer people and fewer resources on the ground rather than delivering promised efficiencies.

A fire management official, identified in Grist’s reporting only as Washa, made a similar point after visiting the aftermath of Utah’s Cottonwood Fire, which was followed by flood damage.

some of our fuel treatments and defensible space concepts are designed for your average fire, not these extreme events.

More homes, more exposure

The risk is compounded by where Americans live. The number of homes in the wildland-urban interface, the zone where development meets fire-prone wildland, grew about 30% between 1990 and 2010, according to reporting cited by Time magazine. That growth has put more people and property directly in the path of fires that are themselves becoming harder to contain.

The health toll is also projected to rise sharply. Researchers cited by Grist estimate wildfire smoke could be on track to kill roughly 70,000 Americans annually by 2050 if current fire trends continue, a consequence that extends far beyond the immediate burn zones into cities and regions downwind.

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