Budget Cuts Making Things Extremely Difficult on U.S. Forest Service Agency

A ton of jobs are going to be lost at the U.S. Forest Service because of budget issues.

Piles of forest material sit under trees near Summerhaven gathered by U.S. Forest Service used for prescribed burning to reduce hazardous fuels. Once stacked, these piles sit for a year or two while the debris dries and is burned when conditions are favorable. / Sarah Lapidus / USA TODAY NETWORK

It takes a lot of time and effort to keep all the forests and parks around the United States in peak condition. What was already a difficult job is about to get even harder because of a shrinking budget leading to positions being cut.

A federal agency, the U.S. Forest Service oversees more than 193 million acres of land across the country. That is about the size of Texas, spread out everywhere.

One of the contributing factors to being able to operate smoothly is the seasonal workforce that is hired. Unfortunately, that assistance will no longer be available.

A few weeks ago, it was announced by the agency that seasonal hiring would be suspended for 2025, which will result in the loss of about 2,400 jobs. All external hiring is being frozen as well for permanent positions. The only exceptions to these changes are the firefighters, as approximately 11,300 are hired each year.

As shared by Nathan Pipeenberg of Backpack, Powered by Outside, “Nearly all of those positions are field-based jobs, ranging from biologists and timber workers to trail technicians and recreation staff.”

The quality of work by the U.S. Forest Service is going to be impacted greatly. Cutting back on jobs isn’t anything new, as about 8,000 have been lost in the last 20 years. But, this is the biggest staff cut in a single year that can be remembered.

“We just can’t get the same work done with fewer employees,” said Forest Service Chief Randy Moore at the September 17th all-employee call where the freeze was originally announced.

Understaffing, according to the American Avalanche Association, is going to become a major problem this winter. Already with a lengthy backlog of trail maintenance existing, the Government Accountability Office believes things are only going to get worse.

The miles of trails that were being overseen was already too much to maintain; now imagine doing that without the help of nearly 2,400 people you were expecting to have.

“This policy will result in a burgeoning of the trail maintenance backlog, both through lack of Forest Service staff attention to trail maintenance, but also through the loss of connection and relationships with partner organizations,” Mike Passo, the executive director of American Trails, a non-profit Forest Service partner, said in an email.

There are people who have dedicated their lives to the agency and will now have to figure out something to do. Danica Mooney-Jones, who was a trail crew leader and with the Forest Service since 2021, is among the people who will not have a job in 2025.

“I moved across the country to work here, for a seasonal job,” she says. “We have people who have worked here for 10 years as seasonals, and made a career out of these positions. They trusted that the jobs wouldn’t go away.”

Mooney-Jones revealed that the staff for the crew she was with will go from five workers to two. The border recreation program will have only four, down fro 13.

Those kinds of cuts will do irreversible damage to the areas the service overlooks. The already difficult task of keeping up has become downright impossible with crews being cut by 60-70 percent in some cases.