Forest Service won’t hire seasonal workers next year, will rely on Colorado volunteer groups to “fill gaps”

The U.S. Forest Service is halting the hiring of seasonal employees next year as it anticipates receiving less than the $8.9 billion it says it needs to pay its 30,000 employees, manage its 193 million acres and fight wildfires. 

While final allocations from Congress are pending, the chronically underfunded and overworked agency is planning to scale back operations in 2025, raising concerns among its many partners in Colorado that recreational projects will be delayed.  

“We have an opportunity to do what we can with what we have,” Forest Service Chief Randy Moore told employees Sept. 16, noting that the agency has lost about 8,000 jobs in the last 20 years and he is “seeing indications of a stressed workforce.”

He told his employees that priorities would be shifting with reduced funding. “We are not going to do everything that is expected of us with fewer people,” he said. 

For example, one question raised this week by NPR’s Marketplace asks who will pump campground toilets as the Forest Service budget shrinks? That’s a big ask for volunteers.

Volunteer groups that work with the Forest Service are braced for “some frustration and challenges upcoming for 2025,” said Doozie Martin, executive director of Friends of the Dillon Ranger District.

Forest Service officials have warned most of their partners to not anticipate big projects in 2025 as the agency struggles through the hiring freeze. 

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

“We are lucky we live in an area where we get a lot of support from the community and that is not something I expect will recede,” Martin said. “Perhaps we will need to adjust our programming … but right now I still anticipate having our 1,000 volunteers patrolling the trails and reporting back to land managers. I think we can accomplish a similar amount to what we have in the past.”

The budget woes mean the White River National Forest — where more than 17 million annual visits to its 2.3 million acres stir an economic impact of $1.6 billion in rural Colorado — will have about 30 fewer seasonal workers next year. 

Those seasonal jobs — which do not include firefighting crews — include fuels reduction, fire prevention and education, campsite management, public education, biological field work and trail maintenance and construction. 

The Forest Service recently converted 1,300 seasonal positions into permanent jobs, including 105 in the Rocky Mountain Region and 15 in the White River National Forest. 

Donna Nemeth, spokeswoman for the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Region, said the agency is working with its partners “to explore solutions to fill gaps where we can.”

Nemeth said the continuing resolution passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in September has kept the agency funded through 2024 and the Forest Service is pursuing a federal process that would offer an exemption to the budget cuts projected for next year.

“And while the bar for exemptions is high, we take funding sources, the ability to conduct work through alternative or other means such as grants or agreements into consideration,” she said in an email. “We also hope to have more hiring options in the coming year if additional funding becomes available.  As you see, we are working diligently to ensure that we are able to do this critical work.”

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

The Forest Service’s 2025 request for $8.9 billion includes $6.5 billion for base programs and $2.4 billion for wildfire operations. The fiscal 2025 budget request is an increase of $658.5 million over fiscal 2024, with most of that increase in the agency’s Wildfire Management Program. The agency supported 410,400 jobs in 2022 and contributed $44.3 billion to the nation’s economy, with 69% of that coming from recreational activity, energy and mining development, logging and livestock grazing. 

“The Forest Service continues to be a good place to invest and will maximize every dollar invested into our agency, making every dollar work for the American people,” Forest Service chief Moore told the U.S. House Appropriations Committee in April. “The citizens we serve deserve nothing less than to see the value of their money at work for their benefit.”

Recreation is a growing force on federal lands. An estimated 159 million recreation visitors to Forest Service-managed land spent $11 billion in 2022. As that recreational visitor spending ripples through communities adjacent to public land, it supports about 161,000 jobs. The outdoor recreation economy reached a record-high $1.1 trillion in 2022, with public lands a cornerstone of the surging outdoor recreation industry’s impact in rural communities.  

While a final budget has not been approved, early indications show the Forest Service will not get the $8.9 billion it requested. The House Interior Subcommittee in June proposed $8.43 billion for the Forest Service. Considering two cost of living increases the agency delivered to its employees this year, the increased cost of projects and the expiration of the one-time funding of $945.2 million in 2024 from the Infrastructure Investment and Job Act, the House’s proposed 2025 budget is about a 4% decline compared with 2024.

The Senate Appropriations Committee in July proposed $6.45 billion for the Forest Service’s base programs, similar to what the agency requested. In an Aug. 29 update to workers, Moore said “prudent planning entails using the lowest” of the two funding proposals. 

In that August update, Moore also warned that cuts were coming “in a potentially budget-limited future.”

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

Lloyd Athearn is the head of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, which regularly deploys more than 30 of its own seasonal workers every summer to rebuild and maintain the well-trodden trails leading to the state’s highest peaks. Since his group hires its workers, he’s not expecting much of an impact from the hiring freeze. 

But Athearn has relied heavily on the help of Loretta McEllhiney, the Leadville-based manager of the Forest Service Colorado Fourteeners Program who everyone calls the “Queen of the 14ers.” McEllhiney retired in August after a 35-year career with the agency. And the Forest Service is not in a rush to fill vacant posts. 

So the administration of federal funding for trail work and securing approvals for Colorado Fourteener Initiative trail projects, Athearn said, “is going to be bootstrapped for a bit in this next year.” 

“Will we run into challenges getting agreements and authorizations in place? If we are getting federal funding for our projects, will those payments be delayed? All the messages I’m getting from Forest Service folks is that people are going to make those decisions happen,” Athearn said. 

“I can guarantee you that CFI will be out in full force next summer, unaffected by the Forest Service hiring process,” he said. “Who knows, this might work out well for us. We could be the only people around hiring trail workers. This may get us access to more qualified people. Who knows?” 

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation recently joined with partners to distribute $3.7 million for 33 projects in Colorado, including elk research, fencing projects and habitat improvements in the Arapaho, Gunnison, San Isabel, San Juan and White River national forests.

Blake Henning, the chief conservation officer for the foundation, does not expect the Forest Service hiring freeze to impact these projects. 

“Most of the work we provide funding to the Forest Service for, a lot of it is done by their fire crews,” Henning said. “Those people are going to help continue the projects we have granted money to. Talking with our partners in the Forest Service, my sense is that a lot of these temporary folks are related to recreational programs like trail maintenance and campgrounds.”

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

The group’s spokeswoman said they were anticipating the hiring freeze will “significantly impact” volunteer operations next year. This year the Forest Service sent VOC 21 applications for projects and the group completed 18 of those. For next year, the agency sent out 18 applications for work on Forest Service-managed land, said VOC spokeswoman Kimberly Gagnon.

“With fewer seasonal staff, we expect the Forest Service will need to scale back essential fieldwork and partner engagement efforts,” Gagnon said. “So, this likely means prioritizing immediate visitor services over routine maintenance and infrastructure projects. VOC is preparing to offset this gap by … providing additional support from our volunteers and staff to keep critical projects moving forward.”