Counties search for footing amid federal workforce cuts

Key Takeaways

Although job cuts are reducing staffing across the federal government, public lands counties are seeing immediate effects, and disorientation, as they lose the personnel they interact with on a regular basis.

The U.S. Forest Service fired roughly 2,000 probationary employees — who were fewer than two years into their roles — in mid-February. Although a flurry of action, including orders by two federal judges, may restore some of those positions at least temporarily, public lands counties are still trying to figure out who and what capacity will remain when the dust settles from that, along with deferred resignations and looming reductions in force.

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“Our district [forest] ranger is not allowed to talk to us right now and his presence at some of these collaborative meetings is important when we’re talking about things like shared projects, management issues, visitation, what’s coming down the pipeline,” said Sonja Macys, chair of the Routt County Commission in northwest Colorado. Her county is part of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, stretching into eastern Wyoming, which lost 23 Forest Service and Natural Resource Conservation Service employees in February.

“We usually get all the different land managers together and talk about what issues they’re dealing with and can collaborate on, but it’s also a place to talk about what’s coming up, like wolf reintroduction, before we’re ready to address it in prime time.”  

Routt and neighboring Jackson County, Colo.’s Forest Service land is currently patroled by a single law enforcement officer, Macys said. 

“We’re looking at a bill in the state Legislature to allow our sheriff’s deputies to conduct some law enforcement on federal lands,” she said,

Washakie County, Wyo. Commissioner Terry Wolf got some clarity from the Forest Service at a March 26 meeting with the neighboring counties that contain the Big Horn National Forest.

“They’ve been under a hiring freeze, so they ended up not losing a lot of people like other forests did, but it shows how understaffed our forests have been,” he said, noting that after a coming retirement, the Big Horn Forest will only have three staffers doing the work of eight people in timber and fuels management.”

That staffing level, Wolf said, likely won’t be sufficient to conduct a timber sale.

Those staff losses worry Coconino County, Ariz. Supervisor Patrice Horstman, even with an exception that spared firefighters’ jobs.

“Fighting a fire isn’t just boots on the ground, it’s all the logistics that go with fighting a fire whether, it’s weather reports, setting up the camps and the food and managing resources,” she said. “It takes a team.”

Coconino County has invested heavily in forest restoration projects — $4 million for in the Kaibab National Forest and $3 million in the Coconino National Forest — but staffing shortages have left the county with unsigned contracts.

“We put our money where our mouth has been, but we had a number of forest restoration thinning projects and fuel-reduction removal projects up in forests delayed,” Horstman said. “This is when you do the work to reduce the risk of wildfire.” 

The Grand Canyon draws 5 million visitors a year through Coconino County, but the park is down to four attendants to work entrance gates, she said, which are causing backups stretching two miles south from the park. 

“We have some of the premier outdoor recreation activities in the country, if not the world, our economy is so much based on tourism and outdoor recreation, but it also has its challenges,” Horstman said. “Working in partnership with the federal government works great, unless that federal government no longer can be there and work with you anymore, and then having all these federal lands can be a mixed blessing.”

Counties have been contributing to federal land management for years, and protecting those forests may mean doing more as staffing shortages continue. But counties may have their limits.

Some Washakie County roads transition into Forest Service roads, but Wolf said those may be casualties of limited resources.

“We have enough roads to take care of in the county, let alone taking on helping to enforce service maintenance and things like that,” he said. 

Routt County contributes to the maintenance of Forest Service roads and snow plowing, but as the county’s contribution increases, it may explore other options.

 “Now we might need to implement a tolling authority for Routt County roads to access public lands to generate money for management,” Macys said. “We are examining what authorities we have and where we have them.”

Wolf said that counties should communicate conditions on the ground to their congressional representatives.

“Give them a good picture of the ground level of what’s going on,” he said. “So much of what they know is top-down. That’s the best way we can help out.”

But Wolf is confident things will resolve eventually.

“It's exciting to see where things are going, especially from a Western state public lands perspective, but in the meantime, you’re a little bit nervous because we’re looking at some growing pains, I’m sure,” he said. “But I’m optimistic in the long run.”