OPINION: The most important wildlife reform in a generation

In August of 1910, 500 miles off the coast of the United States, sailors on ships in the Pacific Ocean were unable to navigate by the stars due to thick black smoke blotting out the night sky. That smoke was coming from the Great Fire of 1910, the largest fire in U.S. history, which burned more than 3 million acres of land in northern Idaho and western Montana over the course of just two days.

The Big Burn, as it’s also known, scorched an area the size of Connecticut and killed 85 people, 78 of them firefighters, making it the second-deadliest event for firefighters in American history behind the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Great Fire of 1910 also transformed wildfire fighting policy and practices in the United States, ultimately leading to the creation of the full-time and multifaceted wildfire fighting profession we know today, which now involves a coordinated response of firefighting aircraft, bulldozers and hotshot crews of frontline firefighters.

At the time of the Big Burn, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) was only five years old, firefighting was largely ad hoc and locally led, and no one saw the need to change anything. After the fire, however, the federal government had far more public support to protect the nation’s forests with a federal apparatus.

The Great Fire of 1910 even motivated one Forest Service ranger who fought the blaze to invent the fire axe the following year. He saw a need, got to thinking, and created a tool that would help save lives, protect property and critical infrastructure, and make wildfire fighting more effective.

This past summer, the White House created another tool to make wildfire fighting more effective. President Donald Trump’s June 12, 2025 Executive Order “Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention And Response” resulted in the establishment of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service (USWFS) in September.

Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessey will take the helm as the first director of the USWFS and Sarah Fisher will serve as deputy chief of fire and aviation management at USWFS.

The U.S. Wildland Fire Service is the most important wildfire reform since 1910, and with the appointment of these highly equipped leaders to guide it, all Americans should have big hopes for the future of the wildfire-fighting industry, and Congress should fully fund it.

In his announcement about the new role, Fennessey said, “My focus will remain on advancing the safety of our responders and the resilience of the communities we serve. The creation of the USWFS represents a historic opportunity to strengthen interagency coordination, modernize capabilities, and elevate the profession of wildland firefighting.”

I know, firsthand, the importance of a coordinated government response to wildfires. Shortly after I was sworn in as governor of New Mexico in 2011, the Las Conchas Fire burned through more than 150,000 acres of my state. At the time, it was the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history, and in 2011 we saw more than 1.5 million acres of our state burn because of wildfires, which is the most in a single year in our state’s history. The very next year, the Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire began from a lightning strike in Gila National Forest and burned twice as many acres as the Las Conchas Fire.

Wildfire fighting technology has come a long way since the time of those fires. American companies are creating camera technology that can detect a fire the size of a basketball from an airplane. We also have companies that specialize in direct, initial attacks on wildfires through aerial water suppression. Thanks to innovators like these, America is better at responding to wildfires than ever before, and the USWFS would only make that response stronger.

I look forward to seeing the positive impact that the leaders at USWFS will have on the industry as we build on past success, deepen interagency cooperation and continue to protect America’s natural resources to the best of our ability. As fire season is now a year-round phenomenon, and every state in the United States has experienced the devastation of wildfires to one degree or another, all Americans should applaud the establishment of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

Susana Martinez served as the 31^st governor of New Mexico from 2011 to 2019.