The Forest Service has proposed burning 127,000 acres during the shutdown.

During the government shutdown, the U.S. Forest Service completed prescribed burns on 127,000 acres, Forest Service Director Tom Schultz announced in an internal memo welcoming returning employees. During the same time frame in 2023 and 2024, the Forest Service completed a comparable amount of work, indicating that the agency took advantage of prime weather for burning even with a reduced workforce.

“Despite the chaos, we accomplished a great thing together,” the memo, first reported by Hotshot Wake Up and confirmed by The Times, said. “We’ve promoted timber sales that strengthen local economies, kept recreation areas open and safe for the public to enjoy, and implemented critical wildfire response and proactive management.”

By comparison, the Forest Service completed about 200,000 acres of prescribed burning between Oct. 1 and Nov. 12 in 2023 — the same period as the 2025 shutdown — and in 2024, about 90,000 acres burned in that time frame, according to Forest Service data.

The latest emergency plan for the Forest Service — the nation’s largest federal firefighting agency — called for continuing essential operations during the shutdown, including responding to and suppressing wildfires.

The plan also includes about 30% of the service’s workforce, including those who oversee forest use permit processing and public recreation, as well as researchers who study forest health and timber markets. Yet oil treatment work, such as prescribed burning and mechanical deforestation, is performed by many of the same personnel responsible for fire suppression—a portion of the workforce that avoids furloughs.

This was important, given that significant fire activity in the West in 2024 prevented the Forest Service from reducing wildfire risk on many acres of land. So, this year, the Forest Service is playing catch-up.

However, Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit organization that represents current and former federal firefighters, found in October that the Forest Service’s fuel management work in 2025 is down 38% from recent years. The organization said the decline was largely due to staff and resource cuts championed by a cost-cutting team early in President Trump’s 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 the state’s investment in wildfire risk reduction work, and even sent a draft executive order to the White House in July that Newsom said would do exactly that.

In 2021, the state and the US Forest Service agreed to accelerate their annual oil remediation work in California to 500,000 acres by 2025.

In 2023, the latest year for which both state and federal data are available, the state reached 415,000 acres, and the Forest Service reached 311,000. Government Dashboard. From 2021 to 2024, the state has invested $4.3 billion to complete the work, while the Forest Service has invested $3.1 billion.

Last weekend’s rain could mark the first start of the proposed burning season in Southern California — home to several national forests, including the Los Angeles and San Bernardino forests — as federal workers return to work at least until the end of January, when grant funding is set to expire.

“I am deeply grateful to welcome back our furloughed employees,” Schultz said in the memo. “I look forward to the whole team coming back together to continue the work we have started in this new financial year.”