Gunner Quinn
On a Forest Service all-employee phone call in mid-September, it was clear that bad news was imminent as agency chief Randy Moore rambled on about recent budget challenges and the employee-first mentality of the Forest Service. Then he dropped the bombshell: the agency wouldn’t be bringing on any seasonal employees, outside of wildland firefighters, for the coming year.
For the most part, that means no more trail crews, biology fieldwork, facility and campground maintenance, and river patrols, among numerous other roles. The Forest Service has been facing budget cuts for years, but this one is on a whole new order of magnitude.
“You know how we get a five percent budget cut, and we still produce just as much as we did with five percent less? And then they cut another five percent and we do the same thing?” Moore said. “We have contributed to the expectations that we can do more with less.”
This time, however, is different. With the budget falling nearly $500 million short of the agency’s requested $8.9 billion, Moore says that employees won’t be expected to do more with less. “I know that this decision will affect your ability to get some of that critical work done… but I know that this is not just a job for so many of you. And when this job is a way of life, you take on some additional responsibilities that I’m not so sure you should, or you can for very long,” he told employees.
In conjunction with the budget cuts, the Forest Service has been working to shift some of its temporary summer staff to “permanent seasonal” positions, which offer more job security and year-round benefits like health insurance. While great in theory, many employees who have been swapped over aren’t thrilled with how they operate. “I’m not the biggest fan of how the position works, and neither are many of the other permanent seasonal personnel in other departments,” one Forest Service employee in Idaho told MeatEater, with a request for anonymity. “With end dates and other matters being miscommunicated and a wildlife monitoring position being stripped of me as of late, it is safe to say that I will not be returning to the position next year. From what I’ve heard from other permanent seasonals, they’ve also had negative experiences, and many folks are unlikely to return unless a lot of things change.”
In terms of the day-to-day operations, it’s unclear how things will look for the coming year, and every ranger district is likely to handle things differently. According to one Forest Service employee in southwest Montana, it’s likely that the administration will attempt to pass on essential tasks related to forest recreation maintenance, like opening gates on roads and clearing logs, to the fire staff.
Another unknown area is how partnerships with external funding sources will work. Currently on many forests, a handful of seasonal positions are funded by nonprofit partner organizations, but it’s still up in the air if the Forest Service will be able to continue hiring those positions, even with external funding. To make things work, the nonprofits would likely have to route funding through fire programs, or through permanent seasonals, which many organizations would be hesitant to do as it would decrease the bang for their buck.
On the White River National Forest in Colorado, for example, a handful of counties and towns have allocated taxpayer money to the forest in recent years, in response to chronic understaffing, especially considering the amount of recreational pressure the forest receives from Denver-area hikers, hunters, fisherman, bikers, and other recreational users.
On October 28, four Colorado congressmen wrote a letter to Forest Service Secretary Thomas Vilsack, expressing their concerns. “In Colorado, we’ve developed fees and partnerships in close coordination with local communities, who supported their implementation with the understanding that funds would be used for specific local recreation and visitation pressures,” they write. “Using the funding for other purposes would breach their trust.”
The agency’s wildland fire program, while still able to hire about 11,000 seasonal workers for the coming year, won’t be without limits altogether. In the same phone call announcing the seasonal hiring freeze, Moore also announced restrictions to the number of GS-10 and above firefighter and support positions. Mainly, that means crew superintendents and other administrative positions.
For hunters, ultimately, the budget cuts will likely have impacts on access and amenities on Forest Service land. It might be worth carrying a chainsaw in the truck and doing a couple extra exercises in the gym this winter to prepare for hiking over deadfall on the trails this coming year.
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