America’s top forester has fronted Congress as US wildfires burn through more than 3.9 million acres, with the 2026 fire season on track to rank among the most severe in recent years. That is according to Dan Newhouse, chairman of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Forestry and Horticulture, who told Wednesday’s hearing with US Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz that crews are battling 72 large fires among more than 40,000 recorded nationwide this year.
Newhouse, a Republican whose central Washington district has lost hundreds of homes to fires still burning, used his opening statement to link the crisis to a “generational decline” in the health of the nearly 200-million-acre National Forest System. A fire that started in the north of his district at the end of last week has already grown to nearly 70,000 acres, he said.
Overgrowth, invasive species outbreaks, underused management tools, litigation, and maintenance backlogs are dragging the system down, Newhouse said, alongside decisions pulling large areas of public land out of management and production. “We are seeing a new fire start nearly every day,” the chairman said, blaming dry weather, lightning, and poorly managed forests.
Reaching back to the Organic Administration Act of 1897, Newhouse noted the law that established the system requires forests to furnish “a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens” as well as protection for the land and its waters.
A sustained drop in timber harvests across the national forest system is hurting both forests and rural economies, he argued, while stripping support from local counties and public schools. He welcomed the administration’s push over the past 18 months to expand hazardous fuels reduction and raise harvest levels, under a White House order to boost timber production from federal land by 25 per cent.
Schultz has previously told Congress that weak demand, not a shortage of trees, is the real brake on federal supply, with US wood-product imports reaching US$25 billion in 2023, the highest of any nation and ahead of China at US$ 17.1 billion.
Newhouse conceded questions remain over the agency’s pending reorganisation, which relocates headquarters from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City and closes 57 of its 77 research facilities. He is nonetheless hopeful the changes will deliver more locally led decisions, more efficient on-the-ground management, and more work at the landscape scale.
Full committee chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson told the hearing that wildfire, forest health, and the rural economy are connected, and that his panel is working to move a new farm bill this year after backing the agency’s management push across multiple past bills. “Confronting wildfire is a crisis and addressing it is about restoring forest health,” the Pennsylvania Republican said.
Thompson pressed Schultz for details on the restructure, plans to expand restoration and fuel reduction, efforts to increase timber output, and the future of forest research and invasive species programmes. More management activity, wider partnerships, and a strong forest products industry would bring broad benefits to forests and local economies, he said.
The subcommittee paused for a moment of silence for Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson, and Sydney Watson, the three firefighters killed in Colorado’s Knowles Fire on 29 June, and for pilot Nicholas Dale, who died in the state’s Gold Mountain Fire on 12 July. Honouring those who made “the ultimate sacrifice” protecting their communities, Newhouse thanked crews still working firelines across the country at great risk to their own lives.
It comes as the agency signed a 20-year agreement with New Mexico on Wednesday to expand timber production, wood use, and wildfire mitigation across the state. The deal is the latest in a run of state signings as the Forest Service targets 4 billion board feet in annual harvests by fiscal year 2028.
