{"id":48917,"date":"2026-05-17T12:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/48917\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T12:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:03:08","slug":"u-s-forest-service-still-prepared-to-support-canada-with-wildfire-assistance-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/48917\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Forest Service still prepared to support Canada with wildfire assistance, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Despite budget cuts and extensive restructuring, the U.S. Forest Service says it is ready to support Canada with any requests for wildfire assistance.<\/p>\n

The British Columbia Wildfire Service is also prepared to do the same, irrespective of strained trade relations, said B.C. Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar, who is responsible for the province’s wildfire service.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot of politics that goes on between the United States and Canada today,” Parmar told CBC News.\u00a0“As the minister of forests, I live it every single day with the attack of our forests industry.”<\/p>\n

U.S. tariffs on Canadian lumber have impacted the Canadian softwood industry.<\/a><\/p>\n

“Let me be very clear when it comes to fighting fires, we will always be there to support Americans in their time of need.”<\/p>\n

Parmar said that despite strained trade relations, he expects Americans will respond if called upon for support. <\/p>\n

He added that this fire season may be particularly challenging for B.C. as much of the province is already experiencing drought conditions.<\/p>\n

The United States and Canada have a long history of supporting one another during difficult fire seasons, but this year the U.S. Forest Service is facing budget cuts and restructuring.<\/p>\n

The changes have sparked worry among groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists, which published an open letter with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, which said the restructuring is bad for both wildfire-fighting capabilities and the department’s research into climate change.<\/p>\n

“Any budget changes do not affect our firefighting capacity or limit our ability to provide support under our long-standing agreements,” the U.S. Forest Service’s national press team said\u00a0in a statement to CBC News.<\/p>\n

It said the co-operation between U.S.-based wildfire services and the B.C. Wildfire Service will remain unchanged.<\/p>\n

This fiscal year, the U.S. Forest Service, which operates under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, received $37 million US less in funding than 2025.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Agriculture website said the forest service’s footprint is larger than can be supported under current funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“President Trump has made it a priority to return common sense to the way our government works,” said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in a March statement about the restructuring.<\/a><\/p>\n

The press release followed Rollins’ July 2025 announcement, which said the U.S. Department of Agriculture \u2013 which manages the forest service, national parks and wildland fire agencies \u2013 is bloated and needs to return to its goals of supporting ranching, farming and forestry.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Fire Service’s headquarters is also moving from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah, as part of a “sweeping restructuring” of the agency, and several facilities are being closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17],"class_list":{"0":"post-48917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}