Bridger-Teton National Forest

More than 200 people are working from the air and on the ground to suppress the fire despite erratic winds.

The National Interagency Fire Center predicts Wyoming will have an average fire season until August, when the likelihood of big fires will increase in the northeast part of the state.

The fire is about 35 miles west of Pinedale and is roughly 900 acres as of midday Monday.

Five employees of Friends of Bridger Teton will work alongside forest staff.

Friends of the Bridger-Teton is hiring five former forest workers. They’ll help complete projects the forest can’t get to this summer – an accumulation of years of lack of funding and more recently, DOGE cuts.

Several former employees of the Bridger-Teton National Forest and other forests received emails on March 18 that have left them “cautiously optimistic” they may have their jobs back. But the uncertainty of the future remains.

The layoffs come as Wyoming struggles with an affordable housing crisis.

A beloved fishing lake near Pinedale now has no fish. To top it off, the entire lake turned red a couple months ago, and land managers and biologists don’t know exactly why. WyoFile’s Mike Koshmrl first reported on this in early December and gives us a debrief.

Fire crews are starting to do some prescribed burning in Grand Teton National Park this week. The efforts help reduce future wildfire risk by burning dead wood and brush in the cooler late fall conditions.

The U.S. Forest Service has historically faced demands that exceed its budget and workforce capacity. And now, looming congressional budget cuts are only putting a finer point on this. That likely means looking for creative solutions for maintaining these public lands, which is nothing new for the third largest forest in the lower 48 – the Bridger-Teton. They’ve worked closely with a nonprofit to fill in some critical gaps. It’s a relatively novel concept in the forest world.