For decades, the wildland fire workforce has been predominantly white and male, but a new report has recommendations to improve diversity.
The current federal wildfire workforce is often stretched past its limits with just the demands of fighting fire, to say nothing of prescribed fires and other preventative work that many say is essential to addressing the wildfire crisis.
Wildland firefighter Abigail Varney, a fellow at Stanford’s Climate and Energy Policy Program and the report’s lead author, said making the work more inviting to women and people of color would be a major step forward on the workforce’s serious recruitment and retention issues.
“That's just a huge talent pool that we could be better utilizing,” she said. “It could really help us … just grow our workforce to meet the increasing demands that the crisis is posing.”
In 2022, the Government Accountability Office reported that the federal fire workforce is 84% men and 72% white. It cited “limited workforce diversity” as one of several key barriers to recruitment and retention, along with low pay and poor work-life balance.
But it’s not just a question of more bodies: A more diverse workforce, Varney said, brings in new ideas as the country tries to move beyond a suppression-first mindset.
“We're going to have to rethink the way we've approached fire, kind of fundamentally. For the last century, we've really focused on excluding fire from the landscape,” she said. “Now we need to learn to live with [fire], and that's going to take just a new set of skills, new types of perspectives and expertise integrated in this decision making. And so I really think that that's going to require bringing more people in.”
As an example, she said some Indigenous communities with long histories of burning on their own land are trying to revive those traditions. But she said “high turnover, a lack of creativity, a lack of understanding about tribes and cultural burning” among federal firefighters can be a “barrier” to such efforts.
“I think by building a more diverse and inclusive workforce and making those values a priority within the workforce, we can really do our part to enable local and tribal governments to get really important work done,” she added.
Her report makes a number of recommendations to improve diversity, including better childcare policies, presumptive coverage of cancers that disproportionately affect women, and improved, culturally responsive mental health services.
Many expect the incoming Trump administration to be hostile to workforce diversity efforts, but Varney thinks the magnitude of the crisis could keep the door open to change.
“I'm hopeful that we can kind of move beyond hostility to words like diversity, equity and inclusion and really see the real value, and also just how much we're missing,” she said. “The wildfire crisis is going to continue to significantly impact our nation for many years to come, and this is something that can really help us.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
