Some news stories have come out about this report, here’s the report itself.
As a trail non-expert (but frequent user) I have some specific questions about the information in the report, and you may as well. I’m hoping that currently working TSW folks can help with some of the answers.
Some of my thoughts on recreation programs in the FS over time..
Both things are true:
1. Recreation has never received the support (financial and other internal) it deserves, given the importance to the public.
2.a At the same time, FS management can be uneven…say budgets..
For example when Scott Fitzwilliams showed up to become Forest Supervisor on the White River, he said he was shocked by how low the recreation budget was compared to the Williamette, similarly Maribeth Gustafson felt the same way coming from the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. It does make you wonder how the national and regional recreation budgets are dispersed. Is it based on miles of trails, numbers of campgrounds, usage, or “what they got last year minus or plus”?
2b. Don Amador’s thoughts on the report as a partner are:
The report fails to highlight Forests that continue to manage high quality trail opportunities largely due to their pro-recreation culture, robust partnerships with OHV and other recreation groups, participate in diverse forest health collaboratives, and take advantage of non-federal funding such as state OHV grants or monies from
Industry grants from RRAF, Polaris, Yamaha, etc. Forests that don’t have those factors are often the ones that falter.
How can the FS make sure that each Forest and District has the requisite culture, horsepower, and access to internal support from other units, to do those things? Is it as simple as a tremendous enthusiast as a Supervisor, or Rec Program Manager or ???
II.Both things are true.
1. Partners including states and counties, contractors, concessionaires, permittees (like outfitter-guides clearing trails), user groups, volunteers and grantees, and internally G&A. contracting, recreation special uses, law enforcement and engineering (roads and bridges) allcontribute to NF recreation.
2. There is inherently governmental work that FS employees need to perform. It would probably make sense for the FS to be able to articulate that, and then determine to fund Districts and their internal partners to do that work.
Anyway, back to the report.
Background: The WO Trail Program engaged 290, mostly district-level staff, from all regions to assess current challenges to sustain trail operations and public trail access. Similar challenges are present in wilderness and developed recreation programs.
Bottomline: Public access, visitor satisfaction, and recreation-based economic contributions will continue to decline in 2026 and beyond without direction to prioritize investments in recreation generally and the trails program specifically. This would include action in hiring, clearer communication, and improvements around grants and agreement (G&A) management. Without this support, the agency risks losing decades of investment in trail infrastructure.
Current Challenges & Impacts
Districts lost up to 100% of trail staff. Critical vacancies, staff reassignments, seasonal hiring restrictions, and G&A delays are impeding trail maintenance and partner support. Many AmeriCorps and YCC programs are no longer available. The agency is losing out on tangible partner and volunteer contributions without the staff to coordinate and provide technical oversight. While partners and volunteers augment capacity, they cannot entirely replace agency staff.
There are crucial gaps that need to be filled. I agree, and I also agree that partners shouldn’t be replacing agency staff in some areas (like inspecting timber sales). In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look across the agency at the old idea that some work is “inherently governmental.” And maybe use similar criteria across program areas? Or is that too entirely grand of a dream?
Hundreds of years of trail expertise lost. Lost skills are weakening the agency’s ability to implement technical projects and oversee partner, volunteer, and contractor work, which is leading to unpassable trails, unsafe bridges, and negative environmental impacts. Skill gaps are in dry stone masonry, rigging, blasting, saw use, construction, mechanized equipment, project management, and partner/volunteer coordination. Animal packer positions are vacant and pack stock programs are at risk; both are critical to keeping wilderness trails open.
Just a bit of history- I sat through many Region 2 budget meetings with the topic “the Pack String and who should pay for it.” I don’t think that this is new.
Widespread burnout and declining morale. Staff report high stress, unclear priorities, poor communication, inconsistent messaging, and misalignment of priorities and resources. Public access is a department priority, but recreation and trail access programs lack support to be effective. Low morale is leading to staff departures from agency and trail program, loss of skills and capacity, and poor customer service.
What kind of support exactly? Do they mean funding? Priority in G&A, contracting or hiring queues? Does this vary by Region or Forest?
Operational Gaps
• Millions of dollars of unspent grant funds have been returned due to key vacancies, no temporary workforce, and lengthy or stalled agreement processes. Districts are forgoing out-year grant opportunities, resulting in millions of dollars of unrealized future funding.
I thought I had heard the Chief say that temps would be back next year and that would be a priority. It sounds like the districts had the bucks but couldn’t get the grants out due to a lack of G&A folks? Or the grants didn’t go out because there was no one to give advice to the grantees? It sounds like the “unrealized future funding” might be future matches that are foregone. However as we reported, match requirements were removed from some kinds of grants. A more granular explanation might be helpful.
Many districts are unable to conduct basic trail maintenance. Front-country trails are being prioritized; backcountry trails are being abandoned. Deferred maintenance is exponentially compounding.
o Compliance issues are rising (e.g., illegal motorized use, user-created routes, trash). The public reports missing trail signage, trees blocking access, bridges in disrepair, and tread erosion.
Impact: Miles maintained down 22%, miles meeting standard down 19%. Lowest accomplishments in 15 years
My observation is that many back-country trails are maintained by user groups, and the illegal use and trash may be more location-specific. I’m not sure that FS presence is required to stop compliance issues, as there have never been enough employees to be there when folks want to be bad. It might be handy to have a map app of trail problems reported, so that volunteers could go and clean up trash, downed trees, etc., or avoid the area if illegal activities have been reporte
Contracting and agreement inefficiencies. Stalled and unfunded contracts and agreements are putting contractors and partners at risk of insolvency, damaging relationships, and reducing current and future ability to leverage federal investments and partner contributions
Is this true of every program (say wildfire, or fuels), or just the trails program? Are there not enough people in contracting and G&A, or are there reasons to believe they could be working more efficiently?
Immediate NeedsExpedite temporary seasonal hiring, especially externally-funded. Allow for extensions of externally-funded and disaster-funded Permanent Seasonal Employee (PSE) positions.
Maybe someone can explain the advantages of externals funding FS positions in recreation instead of hiring their own (like many grant recipients do). It seems like there are advantages to not going through the federal processes and requirements and drama. Maybe because there are certain people already trained and knowledgeable that they are funding?
Exclude temporary seasonals from agency headcount.
Or put them in a separate column and still count them?
Increase G&A capacity to support the robust partnerships in the trail program
Provide accurate, consistent messaging from leadership to all levels of the agency. Clearly articulate that recreation and trails are an agency priority.
Consider restoring direct hire authority for Youth Conservation Corps programs.
Invest in training in technical trail skills for staff, partners, and volunteers.
Support continued maintenance of the TACOS mobile app for trail data, condition and accomplishment reporting
When the Chief attended the Retirees’ Reunion in Missoula, he did stress the importance of the recreation program. I can’t remember exactly what he said but he said something about “clean outhouses” being a measure of how the FS is serving the public.
Voices from the Field“My trail program is suffering the worst morale setbacks of all my district programs.” -Acting District Ranger
“To be honest, I heavily lean toward quitting and reinvention if we go another summer without seasonals. I have never lacked for motivation for trail work until now…it feels like we are on the verge of not passing anything on for the future, and that feels like 24 years of trails and wilderness work rolling back to the bottom of the hill.” -District Trail Manager
“I have an org chart of 20 rec staff… I have 6 left… and one GS7 tech to cover 200+ miles of trails, Wilderness, and volunteer coordination.” -District Trail Manager
“We lost 200 years of trail experience this year.” -Forest Recreation Manager
“With the recent loss of so many key positions, we will lose trails that we won’t be able to maintain.” -Forest Recreation Program Manager
“We were able to get through the summer doing basic clearing, which kept our overall accomplishment numbers fairly the same, but the reality is the other maintenance tasks such as drainage and brushing did not get done, which maybe wasn’t an issue this year, but the cumulative effects will be worse and worse. Then we’ll have a huge backlog, even worse than what it was before.” -District Trail Employee
As I wrote in my essay for Steve’s book 193 Million Acres, there are many of us who would support the program directly if we could. For example, there’s a trail I frequent where the concessionaire requires payment with the old slots and envelopes and cash technology. While the FS is not allowed to charge, it is not disallowed from asking for donations. Seems to me as if they could try a pilot at some heavily used site with good cell reception and a simple kiosk with a QR code. There is so much energy and enthusiasm around our love of National Forest places, isn’t there a way to harness that? Many of us would like to contribute our time, talent and money to support recreation, if we could in some way without placing stress on the remaining employees.
Maybe all it takes is some kind of external leader to unite all the people who recreate on forests into a broad and effective coalition. Which is conceivably what the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable is doing, and yet…
A successful remedy is needed here, I remember the discussions of the Pack String; summers generally viewed that resource as a God-send; budget time it was viewed as the plague! Just like vehicles, they had to be funded year-round – the mules and the Packer.
As for Recreation, I think the passage of FLREA caused an expectation of funding from Mana, ending all worries for funding shortfall. My experience was it only caused in-fighting between recipients, garnering the good old FS way of dividing funds equally. I sort of tongue in cheek mention the past efforts of WO types efforts of solving recreation woes through their “reimagine recreation” process. I was actually excited to hear the emphasis on such a needed solution until I checked with a cross section of recreation folks and Line Officers in the field, who either never heard of it or were never contacted for input. Boots on the ground? 🤣
I truly believed recreation has gotten the short straw in budgeting and personnel, since probably the early 1990’s! Most of this is due to mission creep; doing your own time, doing your own travel, Primary Purpose concerns, color of money, loss of timber sales revenue/KV funds, that danged computer, etc. KV generally cannot pay for recreation, but it also could, in the non-essential world. Generating millions of dollars on-district does help soothe shortfalls in temporaries or seasonals from time to time!
Solutions? A genuine leader to take the helm and find a permanent solution to budget shortfalls! Elevate recreation to attain the same status as at least timber, find those Congressional critters that believe in the capacity of the FS, and other government Agencies to provide the quality of experience demanded by the American public! Thats a start!
“quality of experience demanded by the American public”
It’s still not clear to me how that demand is communicated to the sources of funds. Largely because it is hard to put a value on “quality” and the results of the money spent.
The lack of attention to trail maintenance and management in R2 is nothing new. However, it stems from a larger, broader issue with regional management that goes way back. I was in formal and informal discussions where management bragged about being underfunded compared to other regions (especially 5 & 6). They were proud of it and intended to prove that they could get the job done with less. Then pile on new technology (GIS being one example) that required huge capital and operational expenditure. That cost was not spread across functions on any rational basis other than which wheel squeaked the least. There was not a well organized voice for trail users of any flavor at that time, so that wheel squeaked less. The trail money was there, but paid a disproportionate share of “overhead”.
Therefore, trails and wilderness funding that actually got to the ground was minimal for many years. Current managers have inherited a degraded trail system.