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Forest Service suspends seasonal hires for 2025-26 • Gunnison Country Times [1]

['Alex Mccrindle', 'Abharrison', 'Times Staff Writer']

Date: 2024-09-25 21:49:02+00:00

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced this month that it won’t hire any non-fire seasonals, those who work throughout the year to maintain trails, campsites and do critical restoration work, in fiscal year 2025 (FY25). The decision further winnows down the agency’s workforce and creates uncertainty around just how the Gunnison Valley’s 1.2 million acres of USFS land will be maintained.

Letters sent to regional leadership teams in many Forest Service regions across the Mountain West were leaked on the crowdsourced social media site Reddit two weeks ago. Soon after, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore confirmed during a Sept. 17 all-employee call that the agency is suspending seasonal hires, also called 1039s, for its coming fiscal year following anticipated budget shortages from Congress. The agency will continue hiring its over 11,000 seasonal firefighters for the coming fire year, National Press Officer Scott Owen wrote in a statement to the Times.

“I know that this decision will affect your ability to get some of that critical work done. It will also be felt deeply by managers and units across the agency,” Moore said during the call. “But ultimately as chief my first responsibility is to ensure we can support the employees we already have on board with us.”

The Times reached out to the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison (GMUG) National Forests and the Gunnison Ranger District regarding the number of non-fire seasonals in the area, but after multiple requests, did not receive that information in a reply from the national office.

The GMUG has struggled with staffing for years. Last year, limited staff capacity in the forest held up a multi-million dollar conservation grant slated for wet meadow work, cheatgrass treatments and overall habitat restoration efforts across the basin. At that time, the office was at capacity and could not complete the required NEPA analysis.

“It opened up [the fact] that we need some of that capacity, which is something the Forest Service has been struggling with for a long time … We’ve been hiring and we’ve been successful, but we’re not building capacity, we’re just maintaining at best,” Gunnison District Ranger Dayle Funka told the Times last year.

Now, following the recent announcement, GMUG will not hire any more seasonal employees for fy25. However, Region 2, which contains the GMUG, is allowing seasonals hired in fiscal year 2024 to complete their contracts, even those that extend beyond Sept. 30, when the fiscal year ends.

Seasonal workers maintain hundreds of miles of trails by cutting away overgrown foliage, clearing downed trees and cleaning campgrounds and restrooms. They also assist permanent employees in a number of departments that handle things like recreation, wildlife monitoring, restoration work, timber and rangeland. Other public lands agencies and nonprofits, like Gunnison Trails or the Crested Butte Mountain Bike Association, rely on these workers to ensure land is rehabilitated as recreationists wear down trails and use campsites.

In recent years, the agency has moved nearly 1,400 seasonal employees to permanent status. Permanent employees, unlike seasonals who are typically younger and less experienced, receive full benefits and don’t have to reapply for jobs each year. Usually, these “perms” could pick up extra pay periods if there are projects, or wildfires, that need attention. However, with no funding available, that work will not extend into next year.

Without a strong seasonal base, permanent employees’ workload, especially field work, could grow significantly. Moore acknowledged that as the non-fire seasonal workforce has dropped in recent years, remaining employees have been tasked to “do more with less.” However, he stated in the call that this time around, rangers and supervisors should instead triage and get “high priority” work completed first.

“We cannot do more than we are funded to do,” he said. “Sometimes we are our own worst enemy because of what this job means to us, because of our commitment to environmental resources and managing those resources entrusted to us.”

On Reddit, users worried that campgrounds across the West will be forced to close, restoration projects will halt and interpretive services, like education and outreach, will dwindle. Others said the removal of seasonals will pile on to permanent employees’ already staggering workload.

“We understand that this will have an impact that will reverberate across all national forests. While we wouldn’t want to speculate on the impacts locally, 1039s typically do a range of important activities,” Owen wrote.

The decision is the result of a “budget limited future” Moore stated in an Aug. 29 press release. The Forest Service’s budget is primarily provided through Congressional appropriations each year. The agency requested $8.9 billion in FY25 in the president’s budget ask in March — more than it received last year for both wildfire and non-fire accounts. But the House Interior Subcommittee suggested total funding of only $8.43 billion.

Until legislators can agree on a final budget — which could be well into the new year, as history has shown — the agency will assume funding levels proposed by the House Interior Subcommittee, Moore said. Just last week, Congress passed a resolution that avoids a government shutdown by pushing the decision deadline to Dec. 20.

Like government agencies across the country, the Forest Service is facing the loss of supplemental funding from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Over the last two years, the agency has offered two cost of living increases totaling around 10%. The agency’s finances will be tight following the November election, no matter who’s elected president or who sits in Congress, said Mark Lichtenstein, budget director for the Forest Service.

“That uncertainty requires us to do our due diligence in planning and we plan for any and all contingencies that could happen,” Lichtenstein said. “We do have pretty concrete evidence that this year, FY25, no matter which way, no matter what happens, will not likely be a robust budget environment.”

(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or [email protected].)

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[1] Url: https://www.gunnisontimes.com/articles/forest-service-suspends-seasonal-hires-for-2025-26/

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