The Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce are impeding much-needed fixes to the system used to track firefighters working in remote, active blazes, the investigative arm of Congress has found.
The staffing cuts have forced the U.S. Forest Service “to postpone, pause, or reduce the scope of some efforts planned or underway” to fix what the agency has long considered to be a critical safety issue, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.
Wildland firefighters often work in mountainous, rural, and remote terrain, which limits access to cell service. The weather conditions are often so poor that even satellite communications are difficult to use — problems that can create safety risks for the firefighters if no one knows where they are or what they might need.
The main way that wildland firefighters communicate is with push-talk radios — a problem the Forest Service has been trying to address since 2019, when Congress passed a law requiring that the agency create a tracking system. The GAO says those efforts have been stymied by this administration.
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This is not the first GAO report to find that the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce are intersecting with critical public safety issues. Earlier this month, the GAO found that cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency were putting the agency at risk of being unprepared for a major natural disaster. The administration rejected some of the agency’s findings.
It also rejected the conclusion that their overhaul of the U.S. Forest Service has disrupted efforts to fix the firefighter communications systems. The current agency head, Tom Schultz, a former timber industry insider, objected to the report’s conclusions and asked the GAO to change the title, which reads: “Next Steps Are Uncertain for Improving Communications for Wildland Firefighters and Tracking Their Locations.”
The GAO declined to do so. “Our report described several examples of efforts the Forest Service had paused, postponed, or reduced as of July 2025, and the agency did not provide information about its next steps for such efforts. Therefore, we continue to believe that the Forest Service’s next steps for improving its communications, tracking, and mapping capabilities for firefighters are uncertain,” the agency wrote.
The report points to the agency losing two of the three subject matter experts responsible for trying to address the tracking problem. The Forest Service told the GAO it has filled those positions from the remaining United States Department of Agriculture workforce as of September but “did not explain whether they had fully replaced lost expertise or whether they will be able to conduct all efforts that had been postponed, paused, or reduced in scope,” according to the report.
“Specifically, the officials told us that while they were able to transfer two staff from elsewhere in the agency in June 2025 to work part time on some high-priority efforts, lost expertise had not been replaced, and they were not able to conduct all of the work previously planned,” the GAO wrote.
The report identified specific projects that had been ongoing before President Donald Trump took office and have since been postponed. Those projects included work with NASA to test stratospheric balloons for tracking purposes — work that has been delayed until 2026. They also included creating a blanket purchase agreement for GPS tracking devices and efforts to improve data integration into a tracking portal — and both projects had been paused as of May 2025.
“Forest Service officials told us in September 2025 that the agency purchased 500 devices to provide internet access for firefighters in remote areas via low earth orbit satellites. However, use of these types of systems is limited by the need for a clear line of sight with satellites, as well as by cost,” the GAO wrote in the report.
The letter from Schultz to the GAO in early September includes many objections to the agency’s findings. The letter claims that any uncertainty around the agency’s efforts “has been resolved.” It also suggests that the agency is exploring whether to expand the team responsible for firefighter tracking tools in the future.
USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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