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RICHMOND, Virginia - President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" passed by the U.S. Congress in July is poised to roll back credits for clean energy and boost the use of fossil fuels, according to experts and environmental advocates concerned about its impact on climate change.

It's also poised to by rolling back key funding for prevention and preparedness programmes, which could impact wildfire response, according to an analysis from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

The 2025 wildfire season in the U.S. could potentially pick up intensity in the coming weeks; more than 4,000 people in southern California had to evacuate after the broke out last week.

Other - particularly as climate change fuels hotter, drier conditions that can lay the groundwork for human-caused fires to burn out of control.

Here's what to know:

What fire-related programmes are affected?

The budget bill cuts funding intended for environmental reviews for certain projects – which could contribute to deforestation in national and old-growth forests, according to Matt Sedlar, a climate analyst at CEPR.

That combined with other Trump administration moves is "just creating a scenario in which the federal government can allow development in national forests and, by eliminating the need for environmental reviews, they can basically go in and do what they want and log, mine," Sedlar told Context.

"And we won't really know what effect that will have on the forests."

The budget bill, he said, also cuts funding for the Landscape Scale Restoration Program, a grant scheme that helps states and localities craft resilience measures to cut fire risk.

"Really what it's doing is it's taking away the abilities of localities to get additional funding to manage forests," he said.

"The irony is that in Trump's first term, he famously said 'Why don't we rake the forests?'" Sedlar said. "What he's essentially doing ... (is) taking away the money to quote-unquote rake the forests."

The U.S. Agriculture Department, the parent agency of the U.S. Forest Service, did not respond to requests for comment.

What has been the damage from wildfires so far this year?

As of August 12, more than 43,000 wildfires have collectively burned more than 3.6 million acres this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC).

That compares with about 24,500 fires and 5.37 million acres burned over the same time period last year; the 10-year average over the same period is about 36,500 fires and 4.43 million acres burned respectively.

Some fires this year have been particularly destructive. The blazes that engulfed the Los Angeles area caused an estimated in property and capital losses, according to a projection from the University of California, Los Angeles.

How is the rest of the wildfire season shaping up?

The NIFC increased the national wildfire preparedness to (on a scale of 1-5) as of August 5, noting an increase in fire activity across multiple areas and forecasts that show "continued weather conditions conducive to large fire ignition & growth."

There have been significant fires in the western U.S., including the Dragon Bravo fire in Arizona that burned through more than 130,000 acres.

AccuWeather, the weather forecasting site, projects the wildfire threat will be across the U.S. West during the first half of autumn and, if dry stretches persist, parts of the Northeast and the Atlantic could see a heightened fire risk as well.

"Dry fuels from Hurricane Helene in 2024 continue to be a high risk in western North Carolina, northwestern South Carolina and northern Georgia," said AccuWeather Lead Long-Range Expert Paul Pastelok.

(Reporting by David Sherfinski; Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Ellen Wulfhorst.)