The Forest Service is hiring volunteer freeze teams to pick up the slack

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The U.S. Forest Service will stop hiring seasonal workers next year because it expects to receive less than the $8.9 billion it says it needs to pay 30,000 employees, manage 193 million acres and fight wildfires.

Pending final appropriations from Congress, the chronically underfunded and overworked agency plans to scale back operations in 2025, raising concerns among many of its partners in Colorado that recreation projects will be delayed.

“We have an opportunity to do what we can with what we have.” Forest Service Chief Randy Moore told staff on Sept. 16noting that the agency has lost about 8,000 jobs over the past 20 years and he “sees signs of a strained workforce.”

He told his staff that priorities would change as funding was cut. “We are not going to do everything that is expected of us with fewer people,” he said.

For example, one question raised this week from NPR’s Marketplace asks who will flush toilets at campgrounds when Forest Service budgets are cut? This is a big request for volunteers.

Volunteer groups working with the Forest Service are prepared for “some frustrations and challenges that will come in 2025,” said Doozy Martin, executive director Friends of the Dillon Ranger District.

Forest Service officials have warned most of their partners not to plan major projects in 2025 as the agency grapples with a hiring freeze.

The 20-year-old Friends of the Dillon Ranger District regularly spends about 1,000 volunteer days a year at 60 projects in the Dillon Ranger District of the White River National Forest, which accounts for about half of the visits to the White River National Forest. the most traded timber in the country. Last year, the nonprofit provided more than 8,500 hours of volunteer work and collected 500 bags of trash on public lands around Summit County and helped educate 1,516 local children through its youth programs.

“We’re fortunate to live in an area where we get a lot of community support, and I don’t expect that to go away,” Martin said. “We may have to adjust our program … but right now I still expect our 1,000 volunteers to be patrolling the trails and reporting to the land managers. I think we can achieve the same volume as in the past.”

Budget problems mean White River National Forest, where more than 17 million visitors visit 2.3 million acres annually economic effect of 1.6 billion dollars in rural Colorado — will have about 30 fewer seasonal workers next year.

These non-firefighting seasonal jobs include fuel reduction, fire prevention and education, campground management, public education, biological fieldwork, and trail maintenance and construction.

The Forest Service recently converted 1,300 seasonal jobs to permanent jobs, including 105 in the Rocky Mountains and 15 in the White River National Forest.

Donna Nemeth, spokeswoman for the Rocky Mountain Regional Forest Service, said the agency is working with its partners to “explore solutions to fill gaps where possible.”

Nemeth said a resolution passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in September kept the agency funded through 2024, and the Forest Service is going through a federal process that provides relief from budget cuts planned for next year.

“And while the bar for exceptions is high, we do consider funding sources, the ability to conduct work through alternative or other means, such as grants or agreements,” she said in an email. “We also hope to have more hiring options next year if additional funding becomes available. As you can see, we are working hard to ensure that this important work is carried out.”

Forest Service lands contribute $44.3 billion to the U.S. economy

Forest Service request for 2025 8.9 billion dollars includes $6.5 billion for core programs and $2.4 billion for wildfire relief. The FY 2025 budget request increases $658.5 million over FY 2024, with most of the increase coming from the agency’s Wildfire Management Program. In 2022, the agency created 410,400 jobs and contributed $44.3 billion to the nation’s economy, with 69% of that coming from recreation, energy and mining development, logging, and grazing.

“The Forest Service continues to be a good place to invest, and it maximizes every dollar invested in our agency to make every dollar work for the American people,” said Forest Service Chief Moore. US House Appropriations Committee in April. “The citizens we serve deserve nothing less than to see the value of their money put to work for them.”

Recreation is a growing force on federal lands. Rating 159 million tourists on lands managed by the Forest Service, $11 billion was spent in 2022. As spending by recreational visitors spreads to communities adjacent to public lands, it provides about 161,000 jobs. The economy of outdoor recreation has reached a record $1.1 trillion in 2022where public lands are the cornerstone of the growing influence of the outdoor recreation industry in rural communities.

Although the final budget has yet to be approved, early indications are that the Forest Service will not receive the requested $8.9 billion. A House Interior subcommittee in June proposed $8.43 billion for the Forest Service. Given the two cost-of-living increases the agency delivered to its staff this year, project cost increases and expirations one-time financing of USD 945.2 million in 2024, under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the House’s proposed 2025 budget is cut by about 4% from 2024.

The Senate Appropriations Committee in July proposed $6.45 billion for basic Forest Service programs, similar to what the agency had requested. In the update from August 29 to workers, Moore said “sound planning involves taking the lowest” of the two funding offers.

In that August update, Moore also warned that the cuts would be “in a potentially tight budget going forward.”

“We approach this challenge with great care … which means prioritizing the agency’s collective financial health and ensuring we can pay our employees — above all else,” Moore wrote.

Lloyd Atherne is the chairman of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, which regularly brings in more than 30 of its own seasonal workers each summer to restore and maintain the well-trodden trails leading to the state’s highest peaks. Because his group hires its own workers, he doesn’t expect much of an impact from the hiring freeze.

But Atearn relied heavily on the help of Loretta McElhinney, manager of the Colorado Fourteen Year Forest Program in Leadville, who everyone calls “Queen of the 14th.McElhinney retired in August after a 35-year career with the agency. And the forest farm is in no hurry to fill vacant positions.

So managing federal funding for trails and getting approvals for Colorado Fourteener Initiative road projects “is going to be a little bit off next year,” Atearn said.

“Will we face difficulties in obtaining agreements and permits? If we receive federal funding for our projects, will those payments be delayed? All the messages I’m getting from the Forest Service are that people are going to make these decisions,” Athearn said.

“I can guarantee you that CFI will be at full capacity next summer, unaffected by the Forest Service hiring process,” he said. “Who knows, maybe it will work out for us. We may be the only people who hire investigators. This may give us access to more qualified people. Who knows?”

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation recently joined distribution partners $3.7 million for 33 projects in Coloradoincluding elk research, fencing projects, and habitat improvement in the Arapahoe, Gunnison, San Isabel, San Juan, and White River National Forests.

Blake Henning, the foundation’s chief ranger, doesn’t expect the Forest Service hiring freeze to affect those projects.

“Most of the work that we fund to the Forest Service, a lot of it is done by their fire crews,” Henning said. “These people will help to continue the projects for which we provided money. In talking with our partners in the Forest Service, I understand that many of these transients are associated with recreational programs such as trail and campground maintenance.”

The group Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado – or VOC – this year is 40 years old with plans to double its seasonal staff. Last year he led the group 2,673 volunteers who spent 19,643 hours on more than 100 projects that included maintenance of 21 miles of trails on public lands.

A spokeswoman for the group said they expected the hiring freeze to have a “significant impact” on volunteer work next year. The Forest Service sent 21 project requests to the VOC this year, and the group completed 18 of them. For next year, the agency sent out 18 applications for jobs on Forest Service lands, VOC spokeswoman Kimberly Gagnon said.

“With fewer seasonal staff, we expect the Forest Service will have to cut back on critical field work and partner engagement efforts,” Gagnon said. “So this most likely means prioritizing immediate visitor services over scheduled maintenance and infrastructure projects. The VOC is preparing to fill this gap by … providing additional support from our volunteers and staff to ensure important projects move forward.”

Story Type: News

Based on facts observed and confirmed directly by the reporter, or reported and verified by knowledgeable sources.