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

[cc101]

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.

[theli0nheart]

> 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.

Can you provide a citation for where you’re getting this data indicating that the USFS budget has been declining over time?

Based on the data I found, the USFS budget has increased steadily from 2011-2024 [0]. The 2024 budget was $9.3b [1] versus $5.1b in 2011 [0]. The 2025 budget was cut from 2024, but still higher than the 2020 budget.

[0]: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46557

[1]: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12396

[bearjaws]

Don't worry, soon we will outsource these services to private companies for 5x the price, but then the budget will get approved due to lobbying!

Then we will ask why we even have the government owning parks in the first place, and privatize the national parks!

You will pay $500 to park and you will like it!

[whaaaaat]

This pattern has been played out time and time again. The next steps will be:

"Camp bathrooms are always so dirty, and there's never anyone to staff to help!"

"How can the bureaucracy fail so badly, I don't know why we even pay for the USFS if this is the best they can muster"

"We should privatize this. Maybe we could even sell naming rights. Colgate campgrounds, anyone?"

"(Private companies continue to run shitty camp, citing 'hey, at least we're better than the USFS')"

"Remember how the USFS failed so badly? You can't trust the government to do anything!"

It's been the playbook of every government agency that has not been funded properly for about a generation now (thanks, Reagan). Slowly defund a service so the quality degrades, then complain about the quality and say you couldn't possibly fund the service if the quality is that low.

It drives me up the wall how bleeding obvious this is, time and time again, and yet, here we are, doing it again to the USFS, one of the most important agencies we have in (for instance) ensuring people have access to nature, preventing wildfires, managing our timber stocks, and sequestering carbon.

[blindriver]

This is what happens when your deficit is increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days.

[ddingus]

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.

[user3939382]

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

[anonzzzies]

This is a drop in the bucket compared to military spending; apparently no one cares?

[bearjaws]

We can spend money on both, but we have one party making up issues to be outraged about.

[bflesch]

That's a stupid pro-russian propaganda talking point. Try harder.

[renewiltord]

Damn, we should send the USFS HIMARS. I bet that will help.

[JackYoustra]

I don't think you can use tanks, missiles, shells, and drones to clean trails

[nerdponx]

As I understand it, Ukraine is mostly getting old outdated equipment, and Israel is actually buying weapons, not just receiving them as gifts.

[tacotruck]

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.

[caseyy]

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??”

[blinded]

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.

[embedded_hiker]

There are volunteer groups that do a large percentage of the trail maintenance in some areas. There is the Pacific Crest Trail Association with their local chapters. In Washington state, there is the Washington Trails association. In Oregon, there is Trailkeepers of Oregon, who I volunteer with almost every weekend. There are also numerous local groups across the western US.

[coolhand2120]

Crazy how the money printer only works on some projects.

[kbos87]

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.

[bacheaul]

Spaceflight is not what you want to be picking as a point of comparison if you want to talk about funding government agencies.

> The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion, according to a former Pentagon official. That's more than NASA's budget.

https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-...

[MaKey]

Spaceflight is arguably one of the better uses of public funds, so I'm curious why you picked exactly this topic.

[ceejayoz]

USFS received $9.23B in 2024. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12396/3

NASA's is about $25B. Bigger, but both are pretty small in the overall Federal budget.

[dyauspitr]

Why on earth would you try and take money away from spaceflight rather than the host of other ridiculous things we fund. How about what percentage of oil subsidies?

[ninetyninenine]

Military and healthcare are the astronomical expenses that dwarf both space and the usfs.

Both are plagued with inefficiencies but the military is largely the most useless expense because we aren't at any huge risk that justifies this level of spending.

[whoitwas]

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

[nerdile]

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"

[greenie_beans]

weird dogma hill to die on

[93po]

ublock origin with annoyance filters

[iamleppert]

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.

[azemetre]

I’m not comfortable with the government giving more corporate welfare to some of the richest companies in humanity.

Also really not comfortable with giving more welfare to a single individuals company that routinely breaks the law and brags about firing unionized workers.

[jauntywundrkind]

> 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.)

[karaterobot]

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.

[wumeow]

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.

[trowflahbung]

Blame both Democrats and Republicans. There is more than enough money to go around in this nation, but they’re all too busy sending it abroad whether direct spending, frivolous military deployments, or subsidizing our own defense industry.

The whole system is rotten and corrupt.

[milesward]

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

[dgfitz]

> 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.

[dbetteridge]

The article clearly lists multiple "careers" including biologists, timber workers and maintenance staff.

The only reason they're not careers now and are forced to be seasonal hires is due to ongoing defunding of the forest service over decades

[idiotsecant]

What are you saying? These are vital positions. I'm not sure what it matters to the discussion if they are 'career' or not?

[milesward]

They should be!

[samschooler]

Seasonal hiring for intermittent tasks that are best done in the summer is cheap for USFS and makes sense. They don't need to be careers.

[plasmatix]

And now they aren't even jobs.

[javajosh]

Although I downvoted you, I admit having a grudging admiration for people like you who are openly and smugly conceited. Honestly, that's much better than those who hide their real sentiment in a cloak of high-emotional IQ yet sociopathic virtue signaling obfuscation.

[smoovb]

> 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.

[Glyptodon]

I don't really know what reform you're expecting. It doesn't really make sense that we could afford to hire people to maintain a trail system in the '60s and '70s, and now, with 50+ additional years of economic growth and ostensibly increased productivity, we can't. I suspect it has less to do with needed belt tightening, so much as mandated administrative bloat plus endless tax cuts.

[roamerz]

I wonder why a truthful statement like that is being downvoted?

I could eat steak at a lavish restaurant every night but I realize that if I did so my credit card balance would eventually come to the point I would be using the total of my income to pay the interest. Instead I do the sustainable option and buy groceries and cook at home.

Continuing deficit spending at the federal level will eventually bankrupt our government and make this a worse world to live in.

[readthenotes1]

Are you from Argentina??

[tonymet]

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?