Public Lands Staffing Crisis Worsens as More Layoffs Threatened

Since mid-February, when land management agencies terminated more than 10% of their staff, Outdoor Alliance has been meeting with lawmakers and agency staff to push for solutions, while also working with other stakeholders and media to highlight the real-world impacts of these cuts. Sustained public pressure from the outdoor community is making a difference in D.C., yet Outdoor Alliance is concerned about further cuts coming down the pike. 

Last week, after pressure from the Senate, the Park Service announced it was restoring several thousand seasonal positions, and some forests have managed to bring back a handful of key seasonal and recreation staff. This week, an independent board ordered the USDA (which includes the Forest Service) to temporarily restore a number of positions. While some seasonal and recreation staff have been brought back, reports from local Forest Service offices suggest the actual number of restored positions remains unclear.

While some offices are seeing positions restored, thanks to overwhelming outreach from the public , the agencies are now being required to submit plans for a Reduction in Force (RIF) and agency reorganization by March 13, meaning even more significant cuts are on the horizon. The Forest Service could face up to 7,000 additional layoffs, which would dramatically impact recreation as well as wildland firefighting. After already losing valuable time and losing staff through the deferred resignation program, land management agencies are facing a staffing crisis that may only get worse.

 Over the last fifteen years, funding and staffing for our land management agencies have decreased, even as visitation has increased. Although the agencies have estimated that only 10% of their staff were laid off, up to half of the staff that were terminated worked on recreation, which will have particularly significant effects on outdoor recreation access and the quality of the recreation experience this spring and summer.

During Outdoor Alliance’s outreach to the outdoor community, we learned of many examples of what lost agency staff will mean for recreation. We heard from recreation technicians on the Stanislaus National Forest and Dixie National Forest, who work to maintain trails, clean up campgrounds, manage dispersed camping, and improve recreation areas and without whom trails and facilities will fall into disrepair. The layoffs also include staff who manage ski touring permits and backcountry access in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, backcountry rangers in the North Cascades, and 43 employees on the Custer Gallatin National Forest, including the majority of the forest’s recreation and trails program. Across every forest, lost staff will affect access to outdoor recreation in the coming seasons.

While some lawmakers have suggested that states and nonprofits must step in, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have also laid off the very staff responsible for coordinating those partnerships. Without them, stewardship groups that could otherwise help fill the gaps are unable to get projects approved, leaving trails, campgrounds, and recreation areas to deteriorate. This manufactured dysfunction plays into a larger effort to undermine public land management—by gutting agencies and making them appear ineffective, it becomes easier to justify privatizing core functions like campgrounds, visitor centers, and even access itself. If this trend continues, the question won’t just be who manages public lands, but whether they remain truly public at all.

The outdoor community’s advocacy has been critical, generating more than 100,000 letters to Congress and dozens of opeds in just a few weeks, and has resulted in lawmakers going to the administration and to the agencies to advocate for restoring staff positions. With additional cuts potentially coming, we need to keep the pressure on. Write to your representatives today to demand full restoration of agency staff—because without them, our trails, campgrounds, and outdoor spaces will suffer.