{"id":11518,"date":"2026-01-20T16:03:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T23:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/?p=11518"},"modified":"2026-01-20T16:05:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T23:05:43","slug":"11518","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/?p=11518","title":{"rendered":"Public Lands – Our nations trails are disappearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>WHAT\u2019S BEHIND ALL THIS deferred maintenance?<\/strong> According to Forest Service staffing
\nreports from 2019, the agency\u2019s workforce has contracted substantially over the last 30
\nyears, losing roughly 20% of its staff. Under the Trump administration, full-time staffing
\nhas decreased by an additional 10% due to DOGE layoffs, though this
\nmonth\u2019s Congressional appropriations bill spared the agency the worst of the drastic
\n2026 budget cuts proposed by the White House last year.
\nRecreational trail staff, once robust in the 1980s, has dwindled with these reductions in
\nforce, with many districts reporting zero, or just one, permanent recreation staff and
\nfewer than three seasonal staff to oversee hundreds of miles of trail. A July 2025
\ninternal Forest Service report, shared with me by a confidential source, concluded that
\neach of the agency\u2019s nine regions were missing up to 80% of their trail and recreation
\nworkers.<\/p>\n

December\u2019s follow-up Forest Service report quoted a chorus of disaffected anonymous
\nrangers. \u201cMy trail program is suffering the worst morale setbacks of all my district
\nprograms,\u201d said one acting district ranger. \u201cWe lost 200 years of trail experience this
\nyear,\u201d said a forest recreation manager. One district trail manager was considering
\npacking in a multi-decade career altogether. \u201cIt feels like 24 years of trails and
\nwilderness work,\u201d they said, \u201crolling back to the bottom of the hill.\u201d
\nVolunteers and local stewardship groups have had to show up in force, demonstrating
\nthe value Americans place on access to public lands. In fiscal year 2023, 71,660<\/strong><\/em>
\nvolunteers contributed 2.6 million hours of service to the Forest Service, more than<\/strong><\/em>
\ndouble the hours logged by agency employees<\/strong><\/em>. Yet even that tidal wave of donated labor
\ncan only slow, not reverse, the decline of infrastructure compounded over decades of
\nmismanagement.<\/p>\n

At the highest levels of government, on both sides of the aisle, politicians acknowledge
\nthis systemic neglect. During his Senate confirmation hearing, now-Secretary of the
\nInterior Doug Burgum agreed that addressing the maintenance backlog was crucial: \u201cWe
\njust have to make sure not just the national parks, but across the whole department, we
\nhave to get the formulas right, because we are creating liabilities for future generations
\nif we are not taking care of that deferred maintenance.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ FULL STORY:\u00a0 Public Land Trails are Disappearing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHAT\u2019S BEHIND ALL THIS deferred maintenance? According to Forest Service staffing reports from 2019, the agency\u2019s workforce has contracted substantially over the last 30 years, losing roughly 20% of its staff. Under the Trump administration, full-time staffing has decreased by an additional 10% due to DOGE layoffs, though this month\u2019s Congressional appropriations bill spared the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,15,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-around-the-campfire","category-current-events","category-public-lands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11523,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions\/11523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbbch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}