Workforce
We work to ensure a harassment-free workplace, modernize hiring practices, control risk, and support professional development so that the Department of the Interior can continue to recruit, retain, and empower a workforce of thousands to manage wildland fire on public and Tribal lands across the country.
Smiling recruits at a basic wildland fire training course in Idaho: the Department of the Interior employs thousands of people to manage wildland fire across the country. (Photo courtesy BLMIdaho)
Quick Facts
4,492: number of Department of the Interior and Tribal employees and involved in wildland fire management (2018 actual)
126: Number of official positions working in wildland fire
Harassment-free Workplace
Ensuring that our employees have a safe and professional environment in which to work is not only the right thing to do, it’s the law. The Department of the Interior prohibits offensive sexual or non-sexual harassing behavior against any employee, intern, volunteer, contractor or other non-Federal employee, visitor, or other member of the public. The Department also prohibits adverse treatment of employees because they report harassing conduct or provide information related to such complaints. Read the full anti-harassment policy and explore other employee resources at doi.gov/employees.
Hiring Practices
The lengthening of fire seasons into fire years creates significant challenges for staffing an adequate response to wildland fire. Seasonal firefighters have long been the backbone of the wildland fire management, but current personnel policy limits seasonal positions to six months or 1,040 hours of employment. In addition, the long days needed to manage wildland fire often mean seasonal employees work more hours in six months (2,500 hours) than their full-time, non-fire colleagues work in an entire year (2,080 hours). We’re exploring partnerships that could increase our ability and capacity to hire additional people whenever the demand for firefighters exceeds staffing levels.
Staff in the Office of Wildland fire have also been exploring ways to develop shared hiring certificates for the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture. This would enable more efficient hiring and sharing of qualified firefighters and would reflect the true interagency nature of wildland fire management.
Controlling Risk
Human safety is always our highest priority: no structure or resource is worth a life. We emphasize the importance of safety in all our required training programs and in daily briefings that take place during incidents. We closely document and track people’s qualifications before assigning them work. We enforce medical standards for physically demanding positions to ensure people won’t endanger themselves or their colleagues. We adjust our tactics to make sure firefighters don’t directly engage a wildfire when risks can’t be mitigated to an acceptable level. We study and learn from our mistakes and look for ways to share that information widely.
The wildland fire community offers a number of online resources where people can pursue additional training and learn through the experiences of others:
- Joint Fire Science Program
- National Advanced Fire & Resource Institute
- National Wildfire Coordinating Group
- Wildfire Lessons Learned Center
Workforce Development
The Office of Wildland Fire is working with the human resources officials and Federal fire managers on a number of fronts to address workforce challenges affecting employee recruitment, retention, work-life balance, mental wellbeing, and risk exposure:
- We updated the position description for several wildland fire jobs to ensure consistency between different hiring agencies and provide career ladders and professional development opportunities for firefighters.
- We increased annual salary caps in order to make jobs in wildland fire more competitive.
- The Joint Fire Science Program funds the next generation of fire managers and scientists by supporting undergraduate and graduate research focused on wildland fire.
Join Us!
Are you interested in working in wildland fire? Learn more about how to begin a career in wildland fire or explore the many careers available in the Department of the Interior.
