With the U.S. Forest Service’s budget cut in recent years, and an increasing need for routine maintenance projects on public lands, a local group in Durango is stepping up to help out.

“We’ve seen less and less of a federal budget to manage wilderness areas,” said Brent Schoradt, executive director of San Juan Mountains Association, a nonprofit that works in tandem with the Forest Service. “So our goal is to make a model that can stand out as an example for the rest of the country.”

Congress each year sets the Forest Service’s budget, which includes a wide range of operations that fall under the agency’s umbrella, from maintaining trails and campgrounds to executing timber sales to fighting wildfires.

But increasingly, the Forest Service is having to do more with less. For 2020, the agency’s budget was set at $5.14 billion, representing a decrease of about $815 million from 2019, according to federal records.

And funding for trail maintenance and wilderness projects is not immune. Despite hosting 50 million hikers every year, the Forest Service’s trails have a $300 million backlog of trail maintenance, and in the coming year, the agency faces yet another cut of about $15 million for this kind of work.

The lack of funding has drawn critics.

“National forests, and our public lands in general, offer immense benefits to society,” said Josh Hicks with The Wilderness Society. “It appears many members of Congress either don’t share these values or believe that the Forest Service can somehow do its important work on a shoestring budget.”

The impacts are felt here in Southwest Colorado, too: The San Juan National Forest, which spans 1.8 million acres, had a budget of nearly $20 million in 2019. In 2020, however, that number has fallen to less than $15 million, a decline of about 26%.

This comes at a time when the San Juan National Forest is seeing incredible use. In 2006, the Forest Service estimated about 1 million people visited the San Juans. Recent estimates show the national forest in 2019 is on track to have nearly 1.5 million visitors.

Mark Lambert, public service staff officer with the San Juan National Forest, said it’s a constant balancing act for the agency to shift around funds to meet the highest priority needs on the landscape.

In the Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado’s largest designated wilderness area at nearly a half million acres, there’s no shortage of needs.

In recent years, untold amounts of trees devastated by the beetle outbreak have started to fall down and block trails. And, while more people getting out on public lands is something to celebrate, it also comes at a cost when some people leave trash and human waste.

To make matters worse, heavy snow during the 2018-19 winter caused an unprecedented amount of avalanches, which brought down even more trees on popular trails. As a result, Lambert said the Forest Service had to take away resources from other projects.

“It’s an enormous mission,” Lambert said of balancing available funds and the needs on the landscape. “You do have to be creative … and it can be challenging, for sure, but we do the best we can.”

The San Juan Mountains Association since 1988 has worked in partnership with the Forest Service to carry out education programs and volunteer projects.

Schoradt, however, said this coming year, the group is trying something different by creating the Weminuche Wilderness Stewardship Fund, which seeks to fill gaps for the Forest Service when the agency is strapped for money and available staff.

The effort would reinvigorate SJMA’s wilderness ranger program to get 15 to 20 paid, as well as volunteer, rangers on high-use trails and at camping areas to teach people best practices in the backcountry. Schoradt said one idea is to set up a base camp at Needle Creek near Chicago Basin, one of the busiest areas in the wilderness.

“We see a lot of fire rings above tree line, people camping too close to water sources, and human waste is a big issue,” Schoradt said. “Our goal is to provide a presence.”

SJMA also plans to carry out more trail maintenance projects. On the Elk Creek Trail, for instance, a series of avalanches brought down three to four piles of downed trees, blocking access.

“Everything we do is coordinated with the Forest Service,” Schoradt said. “And we view ourselves as stepping up to help the land managers. It’s such a big effort, with so many needs, we really need all hands on deck.”

Schoradt said the program would ideally operate with a budget of around $100,000 a year from donations and would serve largely as a community effort to take care of the public lands in Durango’s backyard, which in turn, drive the local economy and improve overall quality of life for residents and visitors.

Though wilderness areas account for only about 5% of lands in the U.S., the Forest Service estimates nearly 10 million people visit these areas each year, resulting in more than $700 million in economic output through spending in local communities and job creation.

“If this driver of our local economy dries up because the place is trashed, who’s going to want to come here on vacation?” Schoradt said. “So we’re providing an opportunity for the local community to step up.”

jromeo@durangoherald.com