September 24, 2021 3:15 a.m.

Oregon’s U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden have joined a group of Senate colleagues urging the Biden Administration to increase the pay for federal wildland firefighters and transition many of them from seasonal to permanent status.

A release said the senators noted that pay disparities amongst wildland firefighters are limiting personnel and will leave areas vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires. In the letter, the group requested that at least 1,000 seasonal firefighting positions be promoted to full-time positions. The release said the senators hope to get the provisions locked into the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which calls for $600 million to be allocated to firefighters.

The letter said that, “Given that such a large percentage of land in the United States and the West is managed by the federal government, we have an obligation to ensure agencies have the personnel they need to prevent and fight fires on that land and to ensure that our firefighting personnel are adequately compensated for the highly skilled and dangerous work they do”.

Wyden is the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service, and co-led the letter with California Senator Dianne Feinstein. In addition, Senator Wyden and several other western senators added their signatures to that letter.