The Forest Service Is Losing 2,400 Jobs–Including Most of Its Trail Workers

I'm a camp host for a USFS campground. It takes 3+ seasonal employees to clean the bathrooms, remove the trash, monitor the chlorine content of the drinking water and repair things. Together they maintain a dozen or so campgrounds.

As a camp host I occasionally do these tasks when these employees are absent as well as my usual duties. For this I theoretically receive a small stipend. I say theoretically because the payroll operation is so understaffed it is five months behind in paying me.

Without the seasonal staff, I don't see any way the USFS can keep the campgrounds open as well as do many other functions.

I don't think many Americans understand how 40 years or so of declining agency budgets have hollowed out the staffing of many government agencies.

This is not OK. We pay more than enough to fund the Forest Service.

And I live the Forest Service. They make my life better and I value that very highly.

I do not want private companies polluting our rec lands like they have done damn near everywhere else.

One of the few things I actually want the government doing. We have weapons to give to foreign countries though.

Most of these crews were already short handed and in districts relying extensively on labor from youth conservation corps and private contractors. The private trail building sector has exploded in the last decade or so. More often than not the USFS (and other agencies with some variability) trail crews will work on high profile projects or simply as liaisons/project managers for the private outfits. Even though the work is often just scratching at dirt, building /maintaining trails and the structures they rely on is technical trades work and needs a local culture to maintain standards. Funding solutions should look towards the outdoor recreation industry and cutting fat in bloated non-profit admin. They benefit from selling the lifestyle and all its accessories while contributing relatively little to resource maintenance.

1. Cut fire service funding and jobs

2. Cut forest service funding and jobs

3. “The forest fires are so bad this year, how could this have happened to us??”

That sucks. Its tough work, if you live near any of these trails and frequent them they have volunteer days which are totally worth doing.

It practically means trails won't get the love they deserve and it will be harder to make use of the resource.

Crazy how the money printer only works on some projects.

What portion of the national budget that is devoted to spaceflight would it take to shower the USFS in riches? I'd much rather see it going to the latter.

People are not getting any smarter. Let's spend slightly less on "defense" and reinvigorate initiatives like the Forest Service and CCC!

I would like to share this link with my outdoorsy friends, but the inability to opt out of cookies triggers my morals.

Dark pattern: "To opt out, click the link in the footer that you can't reach because this popup blocks it until you accept all the cookies"

One potential alternative that springs to mind is to repurpose these lands for use with AI datacenters and power generation for AI applications. Locate an AI data center in these forested regions, that could help pay for the workers needed to maintain the land. Tesla Optimus robots could be made to do the jobs of at least 2-3 of these forest workers, and could be shut down and stored when not in use. This will eliminate the significant expense of having to seasonally offload workers, as it really changes it to be more of a storage vs. labor problem.

> The only exception to the hiring freeze are the roughly 11,300 firefighters hired by the agency every year.

You probably wouldn't need first responders if you could hire & not fire all the people you have proactively managing your lands. (So many face-palms.)

This article from a backpacking website is better written and reported than most major newspaper stories I read. Good quotes, and even edited. Probably fact checked too! Kudos.

For those who are disappointed in this, don't blame Ukraine or defense spending, blame Republicans. The Forest Service budget is set by the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies subcommittee which is majority Republican. Their press release on the FY25 bill is here:

https://appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/house-v...

If you don't believe they're partisan, read through the "key takeaways" section. They are responsible for this budget shortfall. Their games of government shutdown chicken are also the reason the budget hasn't even been finalized yet.

That's crap. We need more access to nature, not less.

> In response to a shrinking budget, the land management agency is suspending seasonal hiring next year. Public lands will bear the cost.

These aren’t careers.

> Even with these sobering financial details, it’s clear that the agency’s decision to balance the books by cutting seasonal jobs came as a shock to many employees.

Time for this to stop being a shock. The country needs some harsh belt tightening and stories like these will become commonplace if real reform is practiced.

Can anyone explain the mission of USFS? Why does the US maintain a bunch of wilderness when it’s buried in debt. Why not use federal assets to generate income instead of burdening taxpayers with taxes & debt payments?