We have seen that there are many openings at the Great Basin Institute and elsewhere for various kinds of folks who have been let go or departed voluntarily from the Forest Service.
A recreation person reached out to me, who had 7 years of seasonal work and 1 year of permanent status.
This individual asked two questions:
Have you or others, written about the possibilities for my areas: Recreation, Wilderness, Trails?
During prior contractions in federal job, what options lead to new jobs in public lands?
Hopefully someone out there has experience and knowledge that you can share. If you don’t feel comfortable commenting in public here, please email me at Sharon at forestpolicypub.com and I can share with this individual.
As a former trail worker, I am maintaining some hope that the Forest Service (and possibly other agencies?) will increase their contracting opportunities. I would recommend checking in with anyone still on your district to see if this might be the case. If so, you could work on starting an LLC and getting set up to contract with the government, or reach out to the businesses that are already doing contract trail work on your district or other districts to see if they might be looking to hire. YOu would be a real asset to a contracting outlet not least of which because you know the area, know federal trail specs, and know how the FS works from the inside.
Other options would be to reach out to nonprofits doing this work through agreements with the Forest Service, but my guess is that they may not pay as well. I could be wrong.
Thanks, Chelsea! While I was looking for a photo for this post, I ran across “hybrid crews” with FS and NGO’s in your neck of the woods.
Interesting!
Also this: “The WRTC also has a Collection Agreement with the Sawtooth National Forest – Ketchum Ranger District to fund federal trail crew member positions as needed on a year-to-year basis. This allows the KRD to hire trail crew members as USFS employees, with the WRTC reimbursing the costs of crew members.”
There was a weird twist last fall when the “no temporary” thing started, where the FS wouldn’t let local governments pay for them..
Don’t know how widespread that was..https://www.summitdaily.com/news/us-forest-service-hiring-freeze-critiques/
“The current hiring freeze jeopardizes these partnerships, risking hundreds of jobs and leaving resources on the table,” the Colorado congressional delegation wrote.
Sara with the WRTC here! I read the Smokey Wire, thank you for such a great resource.
We started the hybrid crew model last year after years of planning it. This year, we hired 5 trail crew members as WRTC employees, but mainly supervised by the sole remaining USFS trail crew supervisor at the Ketchum Ranger District and working basically as a USFS crew. We did our best to match federal wages, benefits, time off, etc., even making our trail crew lead position as similar to a 13/13 as we could get. We were able to match almost everything exactly. We also have an agreement with the BLM locally, so our crew does some work on BLM trails as well.
This is all funded by 80% private funds, 20% from USFS and BLM. This will shift from year to year, but luckily for us, we had this on the books before the current administration stopped CSS’s in their tracks. We are also fortunate to be located in an area that can fund this sort of thing with private philanthropy, so in no way do we think it is necessarily able to be replicated in all areas. Unless you have a local RD that can figure out how to send majority funding to a nonprofit via CSSs. Or you can get local governments to kick in.
We maintain a Collection Agreement in addition to the CSS so we have more options to respond to whatever may come up. That way, we can also help support a federally hired position if we need to. And it makes grant funding matching very easy for the KRD to have our CA on the books.
Our goal was to support the USFS in maintaining our/their trail network, and this seemed like the most efficient way to do that. The USFS has the knowledge, legal ability and physical infrastructure (shops, tools, etc.) to host a trail crew, they just needed people. We provide the people.
Happy to chat more, my email is [email protected]
Thank you, Sara, for your reply and all the great work you are doing!! would you explain to readers (and me) what a CSS and a collection agreement are?
Yes! Apologies for the jargon heavy comment.
A CSS is a Challenge Cost Share Agreement, made between the USFS and a non-governmental entity or other non-federal government entity. It allows money to flow both ways, to the USFS from the NGO/other entity and from the USFS to the NGO/other entity. They are typically written for a specific thing, our is essentially “we will work together to maintain KRD trails.” It has specifics in it, like allowing our employees to drive government vehicles and live in government housing. It comes with performance metrics and reporting requirements. It is the backbone of working together on the ground for something like a hybrid trail crew. These type of agreements exist for almost anything you can think of that the USFS does in collaboration with others on the ground.
A CA, Collection Agreement, allows the money to flow from the NGO/other entity to the USFS, and that is it. It is essentially an agreement for the USFS to “bill” the NGO/other entity for a specific cost. In our case, this is trail crew wages. We get billed quarterly for whatever trail crew wages the KRD wants to assign to our CA up to a certain limit.
That’s the ClifNotes version. They are both helpful tools to allow us (meaning the USFS and the WRTC) to continue getting work done on the ground.
I’m not aware of any wilderness trails positions through partner organizations that are currently unfilled. There may be opportunities for the next field season, however contracts and cost shares are not as secure as in the past. Outside of entry level AmeriCorp/conservation corps style work, specific local organizations have filled some holes in the past.
https://www.selwaybitterroot.org/jobs
https://www.bmwf.org/jobs
https://www.abwilderness.org/seasonal-positions
To those who were fired after giving so much to both the land and the public, my soul aches for you.
As does mine.