Park County Fire Marshall Jerry Parker is concerned. "Very concerned," he said as dry conditions threaten ecosystems across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Big Horn Basin.

"It's drier than last year," Parker warned.

Last year in mid-August Parker approached the Park County Commission with a resolution making the lighting and firing of fireworks and all outdoor open fires (with few exceptions) prohibited. However, he said Park County usually follows fire ban policy decisions made by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Essentially, if they call for a fire ban, so will Park County, Parker said.

However, some are already calling for fire bans and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has sent letters to resource manager across the west instructing them to "accelerate initial attacks and use a full suppression strategy, in coordination with our interagency partners, across all land jurisdictions to suppress fires early and limit growth."

About 70% of the western state habitats, including Wyoming, are currently in drought conditions. It's easy to think that some rainy weather could rectify the dry conditions, but Parker said recent rains have done nothing to alleviate the current trend.

More than 2.4 million acres have already burned this year, which is nearly double the 10 year average for this point in the year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. And, the center recently updated its summer forecast, which is predicting above normal fire potential across much of the West. Fighting the blazes hasn't been easy.

Heading into the 2026 fire season, federal land agencies are down more than 26,000 staff and fuels reduction work was down 35% in 2025, or about 1.4 million fewer acres treated than in 2024.

"This is the crucial work that creates defensible space. It's what gives our wildland firefighters access and a fighting chance, and can reduce the loss of life, property and natural resources when wildfires do occur," said Andrea Delgado, the founder and principal at Hawkeye Strategies during an online event organized by the Center for Western Priorities. She is also the former deputy regional forester for fire, fuels, and aviation at the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain region.

When Hawkeye Strategies looked at employee losses in the 11 western states, those communities bore a disproportionate share of these cuts, about 36% of the 26,000 employees cut by DOGE. Among the 11 states, more than 9,200 staff were lost, and if you're looking strictly at the wildlife fire management agencies and bureaus within the U.S, Department of Agriculture and Department of Interior, (Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service), between 2024 and 2025 more than 12,000 staff were lost.

DOGE is an initiative started when President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on Jan. 20, 2025.

While very few if any of the actual wildland fire suppression crews have seen cuts from DOGE, it takes much more than just firefighters to fight a fire, said former Vice President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters Bobbie Scopa, who has 45 years experience on fire lines, including as a Type One and Type Two operations section chief with the Forest Service.

"There is a whole lot more going on behind the scenes, other than the helicopters in the air and the hot shots cutting line. Those are all obviously critical, but they cannot be successful without having the whole organizations of these land management agencies behind them to make them successful," she said.

When a fire starts, teams of somewhere between 50 to 70 attack positions on the ground. They're not firefighters, they are nonfirefighting positions used to manage and dispatch aviation equipment, supply cache managers and folks who manage logistics, maps and financial records.

"This is a huge business," said Dr. Hugh Stafford, a research ecologist in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. "When a large wildland fire starts, support contributes to the success of the firefighters."

It is the incident support staffs who saw their numbers dwindle during the DOGE reductions. Without them, fighting large fires can be dangerous and take longer to gain control of the blazes, he said.

The cost of fighting these fires is also increasing dramatically. The total forest service allocation destined for wildfire related budget items has grown; from 16% of the total budget in 1995 to 67% of the budget in 2025. In some states, that percentage is closer to 80%.

"This leaves precious little funding for all the other things a resource management agency should be doing, like building and maintaining trails and campgrounds, protecting watersheds, and securing water supplies, protecting endangered species and habitats, carrying out regular inventory and monitoring, sustainably managing forest shrub lands and rangelands, planting trees, educating the public," Stafford said.

The increase in number and size of wildland fires will likely continue to increase, he said, adding, "Obviously things are changing, the climate's getting warmer, irregardless of what people think. It's getting warmer faster; real fast. And the end of the fire season extending."

Staffing and budget cuts to the support system behind the firefighters are likely to make a huge difference in their effectiveness, said Jeff Mow, former Glacier National Park Superintendent and currently the vice chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, an organization of over 2,500 current and former National Park Service employees.

"Some of these staffing cuts have had impacts on that sort of in-house capability that places like Glacier National Park often have. It was my experience working here in the northern Rockies, that our fire season starts late, and historically it's been our experience that when we go to the cupboard or the fire caches, there's not a lot left," Mow said.