Most forest service workers will lose their jobs

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The US Forest Service is a federal agency that manages 193 million acres of land, roughly the size of Texas. Next year, the agency will have to manage the land without seasonal labor. In September the agency announced that it would suspend all seasonal hiring for the 2025 season, a decision that would result in about 2,400 job cuts. Nearly all of these jobs are in the field, from biologists and loggers to technicians and recreation specialists. In addition, the agency is freezing all external hiring for permanent positions. The only exception to the hiring freeze is for the approximately 11,300 firefighters the agency hires each year.

According to the agency and its partners, the consequences of these personnel cuts will be far-reaching and severe. At the Sept. 17 all-staff meeting at which he announced the hiring freeze, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said, “We simply cannot do the same job with fewer employees.” While the Forest Service has been cutting jobs for decades — about 8,000 jobs over the past 20 years, Moore said — this would be the largest single-year workforce reduction in recent memory.

Seasonal employees perform vital field work and research outside of what many Americans consider the Forest Service’s jurisdiction. Rangers patrol whitewater rivers, rock climbing cliffs, and dangerous alpine peaks. Biologists work in critical salmon fisheries. Teams of vacationers service forest roads and clean camp toilets. If necessary, employees of all categories participate as emergency firefighters. Staff cuts could leave some avalanche centers that rely on Forest Service funding to be understaffed this winter, according to the American Avalanche Association.

And then there are the trails. The Forest Service has faced a maintenance backlog for more than a decade and oversees more miles of trails than it can maintain, according to the Government Accountability Office. Cutting most of the service staff will only make the problem worse.

“This policy will lead to the flourishing backlog in route maintenance“This is due to both a lack of focus by Forest Service staff on trail maintenance and a loss of communication and relationships with partner organizations,” Mike Passo, executive director of American Trails, a nonprofit partner of the Forest Service, said in an email.

tourist spoke with nearly a dozen permanent and seasonal Forest Service employeesalmost on condition of anonymity, about his experience of downsizing. Some expressed concern that trail crews simply wouldn’t be able to operate. They described crews of six seasonal employees disappearing, leaving one or two permanent crew leaders struggling to get things going. One trainee in the National Pathways program, which is designed to automatically place successful trainees into a permanent position at the agency, said she was told her job offer would likely be withdrawn. Other conservation and nonprofit workers who viewed forest service positions as a stepping stone to their careers are rethinking their priorities.

Danica Mooney-Jones, a trail crew leader who has been with the Forest Service since 2021, will be among those out of work next year. Where she works, the ranger staff will be cut from five to two, and the wider recreation program will be cut from 13 staff to four.

“I moved across the country to work seasonal work here,” she says. “We have people who have worked here for 10 years as seasonal workers and have made careers in these positions. They believed that jobs would not disappear.”

Now she and her former colleagues face a difficult choice: leave their communities to find work elsewhere, or stay there and find a new career. Mooney Jones considers herself lucky; armed desert EMT trainingshe found a local winter job as a ski patroller. Still, the idea of ​​leaving the Forest Service forever is sobering.

“I would be very sad if this was the end of my sporting career,” Mooney-Jones says. “I really enjoy doing my job, I enjoy seeing the product, and I’m very proud of the work that we do.”

Road maintenance is important every season, but 2025 may be especially difficult to reduce the number of workers doing it. Following Hurricane Helen, southern portions of the Appalachian Trail are closed due to landslides, landslides and washed out bridges. According to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, more than 2,000 AT trees need to be cleared in Tennessee alone, and many Forest Service access roads from Georgia to Virginia are closed due to erosion and rockfalls.

And that’s just on the AT, a popular long-distance trail supported by a nonprofit organization and hundreds of trained volunteers. Elsewhere in the southern United States, lesser-known trails face similar conditions, but their opening depends solely on Forest Service officials.

The cuts have also left employees and partners wondering how the budget shortfall became so severe after several promising years of increased funding.

In 2021, the Biden administration set a $15-an-hour minimum wage for all federal employees, increasing pay for some entry-level positions in the Forest Service. Over the past few years, the agency has also converted about 1,300 seasonal non-fire positions into permanent positions. Wildlife firefighterswho now make up about half of the Forest Service’s workforce, received bonuses of up to $20,000 a year, which were temporarily funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Several Forest Service employees said they hope the pay raise for firefighters will eventually lead to raises for other employees working in the field.

But these short-term gains have all but disappeared, replaced by sudden budget deficits.

In March, the Forest Service requested $8.9 billion in funding, an increase of $500 million from the 2024 estimate of $8.37 billion. By the summer it became clear that the agency was unlikely to get it. In August, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore released a statement preparing the USFS for budget cuts. With little evidence that Congress will pass a government funding bill by year’s end, Moore said in a Sept. 17 message to employees that “(the Forest Service) has a responsibility to plan for the most conservative funding opportunity.” A week later, Congress passed a continuing resolution extending 2024 funding levels through December 20.

The smallest number Moore mentions comes from a House Appropriations Committee proposal that would set spending limits for all federal land management agencies, including the Forest Service and the National Park Service. This year’s proposal includes $8.43 billion for the Forest Service—technically a modest increase over 2024. But last year’s budget was boosted by an additional $945 million from pandemic-era stimulus bills, a funding source that has since dried up. And while the House proposal fully funds firefighter pay increases, the proposed budget would still require cuts in other parts of the agency. All these details muddy the financial picture, but relative to total funding in 2024, the agency could face a budget hole of nearly a billion dollars next year.

Since the Forest Service’s budget for next year has not yet been approved, there is a possibility that the agency will fill some seasonal positions in the near future. “We are working closely with individual partners to find creative solutions and fill gaps where possible. And we hope to have more hiring options next year if additional funding becomes available,” Scott Owen, national spokesman for the Forest Service, wrote in an email.

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.

“My confidence has definitely taken a hit,” Mooney-Jones says. “I would consider returning to the Forest Service, but I’m not sure I could. It’s a balance between how I feel about how we’re treated and how much I love the forest.”