in effect
Executive Order 14308, signed June 12, 2025, directs multiple federal agencies to take specific steps to improve wildfire prevention, response, and coordination. It sets firm deadlines for agency actions ranging from 90 to 210 days and focuses on reducing bureaucratic barriers, modernizing technology, and strengthening cooperation between federal, state, and local governments.
Within 90 days, the Departments of Interior and Agriculture must consolidate their separate wildland fire programs and expand partnership agreements with state, local, tribal, and community entities. Within 90 days, the EPA must consider revising or removing rules that restrict prescribed burns, and the Agriculture and Interior Departments must consider easing restrictions on aerial fire retardant use. Within 180 days, agencies must produce a technology roadmap covering AI tools, data sharing, improved fire-detection modeling, and weather forecasting for wildfire response. Within 120 days, the Defense Department must identify historical satellite data that can be declassified and released to improve wildfire prediction. Within 210 days, the Defense Department must evaluate selling surplus military aircraft and parts that could support firefighting operations.
State and local governments, tribal communities, and local fire agencies stand to receive expanded federal partnership agreements and improved access to technology and resources. Electric utilities are affected because federal agencies are directed to consider new rules reducing wildfire ignition risk from power infrastructure and to review related pending litigation. Landowners and forest managers may see changes in what prescribed burn and biomass-removal activities are permitted under federal rules.