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The US Forest Service is a federal agency that manages 193 million acres of land, an area about the size of Texas. Next year, the agency will have to manage that land without the seasonal workforce. In September, the agency announced that it would suspend all seasonal hiring for the 2025 season, a decision that will cut about 2,400 jobs. Almost all of these positions are field jobs, from biologists and woodworkers to road technicians and recreation staff. In addition, the agency is freezing all external hiring for permanent positions. The only exception to the hiring freeze is the roughly 11,300 firefighters employed by the agency each year.

According to the agency and its partners, the effects of these staff cuts will be far-reaching and severe. In the Sept. 17 call to all employees announcing the hiring freeze, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said “We can’t do the same job with fewer employees.” Although the Forest Service has been shedding jobs for decades — about 8,000 jobs over the past 20 years, Moore said — this will be the largest single-year staff reduction in recent memory.

Seasonal employees perform vital fieldwork and research that extends beyond what many Americans consider the Forest Service’s jurisdiction. Rangers patrol whitewater rivers, rock climbing and dangerous alpine peaks. Biologists work for critical salmon fisheries. Recreation crews maintain forest roads and clean camp latrines. Employees of all types step in as emergency firefighters when needed. According to the American Avalanche Association, staffing cuts could leave some avalanche centers, which rely on the Forest Service for funding, understaffed this winter.

And then there are trails. According to the Government Accountability Office, the Forest Service has a maintenance backlog of more than a decade and oversees more miles of trail than it can maintain. Cutting most of its field road staff will only make the problem worse.

“This policy will result in an increase of backlog in route maintenanceboth due to Forest Service personnel’s lack of attention to trail maintenance and loss of connection and relationships with partner organizations,” said Mike Passo, executive director of American Trails, a non-profit partner of the Forest Service, in a e-mail.

Backpack talked to nearly a dozen permanent and seasonal Forest Service employeesmostly on condition of anonymity, about their experiences with downsizing. Several expressed concern that trail crews would simply be unable to operate. They described crews of six seasonal employees disappearing, leaving one or two permanent crew leaders to try to make things work. An intern in the National Pathways program, designed to automatically place successful interns in a full-time position with the agency, said she was told her job offer would likely be revoked. Other trail workers at conservation corps and nonprofits who saw Forest Service positions as a step up the career ladder are rethinking their priorities.

Danica Mooney-Jones, a trail crew chief working with the Forest Service since 2021, is among those without a job next year. Where they work, trail crew staff will go from five to two, and the broader recreation program is reduced from 13 employees to just four.

“I moved across the country to work here for a seasonal job,” she says. “We have people who have worked here for 10 years as seasonals and have made careers out of these positions. They trusted that the jobs weren’t going to disappear.”

Now she and her former co-workers have a tough choice to make: leave their communities to find work elsewhere, or stay put and find a new career. Mooney Jones considers herself lucky; armed with wilderness EMT trainingshe found a local winter job as a ski patroller. Still, the idea of ​​leaving the Forest Service behind forever is troubling.

“I would be very sad if this was the end of my career,” says Mooney-Jones. “I really enjoy doing the work, I enjoy seeing the product, and I’m very proud of the work we do.”

Trail maintenance is important every season, but 2025 may prove to be a particularly difficult year to cut the workers who do it. After Hurricane Helene, southern portions of the Appalachian Trail are closed due to blowouts, landslides, and washed out bridges. According to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, there are more than 2,000 trees to clear from the AT in Tennessee alone, and many Forest Service access roads from Georgia to Virginia are closed due to erosion and rockfall.

It’s just on the AT—a popular long-distance trail supported by a non-profit organization and hundreds of trained volunteers. Elsewhere in the southern US, lesser-known trails are experiencing similar conditions, but are relying solely on Forest Service personnel to reopen.

The cuts also left staff and partners wondering how the budget shortfall got so bad after several promising years of funding increases.

In 2021, the Biden administration imposed a $15 hourly minimum wage for all federal employees, which increased wages for some Forest Service jobs. In recent years, the agency has also converted about 1,300 seasonal non-fire positions into permanent jobs. The wild firemenwho now make up about half the Forest Service workforce, received bonuses of up to $20,000 a year, which were temporarily funded through the bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Several Forest Service employees said there is hope that pay raises for firefighters will eventually translate into raises for other employees in the field.

But those short-term gains have all but disappeared, replaced by a sudden budget deficit.

In March, the Forest Service requested $8.9 billion in funding, a $500 million increase over the $8.37 billion in 2024. By summer, it was clear the agency was unlikely to receive In August, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore released a statement preparing the USFS for a reduced budget. With little evidence that Congress will pass a bill to fund the government by the end of the year, Moore said in the Sept. 17 call to all employees that “(the Forest Service) has an obligation to plan for the most conservative funding possibility.” A week later, Congress passed a continuing resolution that extended funding levels from 2024 through December 20.

The lower number Moore referred to comes from the House Appropriations Committee’s proposal, which sets spending limits for all federal land management agencies, including the Forest Service and the National Park Service. This year’s proposal includes $8.43 billion for the Forest Service — technically a modest increase compared to 2024. But last year’s budget was boosted by another $945 million through stimulus bills from pandemic, a source of funding that has since dried up. And while the House proposal fully funds the firefighter pay raise, the proposed budget would still require cuts elsewhere in the agency. All of these details cloud the financial picture, but compared to total funding in 2024, the agency could face a budget hole of nearly a billion dollars next year.

Because the Forest Service’s budget for next year is not yet finalized, there is a chance the agency will fill some seasonal positions in the near future. “We work closely with individual partners to explore creative solutions to fill gaps where we can. And we hope to have more hiring options next year if additional funding becomes available,” Scott Owen, national press officer for the Forest Service, wrote in an email.

Even with these sobering financial details, it’s clear that the agency’s decision to balance the books by cutting seasonal jobs came as a shock to many employees.

“My confidence definitely took a hit,” says Mooney-Jones. “I would consider going back to the Forest Service, but I’m not sure I could. It’s a balancing act between how I feel about how we’ve been treated and how much I love the forest.”