This is part one of a two-part series on public land volunteers. Part II will focus on the Durango-based San Juan Mountains Association.
The Republican Trump Administration has drastically cut funds for public lands staff across all of the land management agencies – the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. But Americans love our public lands, which unite us. Regardless of political persuasion, across the West volunteers and local communities have stepped up to help.
The cuts to personnel have been severe by forcing early retirements, firing young, probationary employees and transferring other workers desperately trying to hold on to their federal careers and give back to the landscapes they have come to know. In Monticello, Utah citizens have written letters in the San Juan Record trying to save jobs for U.S. Department of Agriculture employees who assist with agricultural loans.
At the U.S. Forest Service, 5,100 people quit or were forced out already this year requiring staffers to move to minor regional hubs. All nine major USFS regional offices across the West will be shuttered. Region 3 in Albuquerque is now left with a skeleton crew.
“The regional office was where the most highly trained and experienced managers developed locally informed management strategies for national forests across the Southwest,” write scientists in the Santa Fe New Mexican. “The regional offices were established in the first place (117 years ago) to reduce travel costs, increase efficiency and allow regional foresters and their staff to be physically closer to the forests they manage and the public they serve.”
Valuable resource knowledge, expertise and community connections have been lost. One local volunteer here in southwest Colorado told me, “I supported shrinking the Washington, D.C. bureaucracy, but I assumed we’d still have boots on the ground here in the forest.” That is not what has happened.
Both in the Forest Service and the National Park Service, no one is available now to clean toilets and perform maintenance duties. Those jobs are falling to remaining professional staff members or not happening at all. In the San Juan National Forest, donors and our lodgers tax provided $54,000 to keep 20 toilets available at trailheads and camping areas. “If all those bathrooms on highway 550 weren’t open, holy crap we’d have a nasty mess,” a staff member from a local conservation organization said.
Near Ironton Park, between Silverton and Ouray, along trails posts may still stand, but essential trail numbers are gone, either stolen or broken. No one is checking trail registers. So if hikers get lost, and in the higher mountain ranges there may be limited or no cellphone service, no one will know what trail a tourist hiked or when a visitor began, which makes searches far more difficult and dangerous.
A recent article in The New York Times chronicled 90 national parks with lost revenue and reduced search and rescue and emergency services. Less staff has meant fewer rangers for talks, shortened hours at visitor centers and ironically less federal funding coming in from the parks because no one is available to receive entry fees. That’s happened this summer at Mesa Verde and other parks across the West.
We’re used to seeing rangers in their flat-brimmed hats welcoming us with a smile, a map and a brochure, but often now there’s just a sign telling visitors to pay using a QR code. Volunteers are filling in. According to The Times, at Zion National Park Julie Maner, from New York City but with a nearby condo, is volunteering twice a week to receive entrance fees. “They’re losing a heck of a lot more money than whatever they’re saving,” she said.
Chimney Rock National Monument near Pagosa Springs was proclaimed by President Obama in 2012 and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. Because of the prestigious declaration of national monument status, by 2022 the Forest Service had built a new visitor center, amphitheater, additional hiking trails and added toilets and shade structures. The San Juan National Forest provided a full-time manager, eight seasonal rangers and worked closely with the Chimney Rock Interpretive Association allowing the monument to be open seven days a week from May 15 to Oct. 15, and bringing approximately $27 million into the Pagosa Springs economy from 22,000 annual visitors.
Now under the Trump administration, “Forest Service funding has been drastically cut to the point of not allowing them to conduct the lawful mission of their agency,” explains Ernie O’Toole, one of the more than 70 volunteers who work at the monument under CRIA. With cutbacks this spring, the Forest Service asked that CRIA fund three personnel – one full time and two part time, including, yes, you guessed it, pumping out the vault toilets, and purchasing toilet paper, cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer.
“Volunteers put in extra time at the various positions so that operations would be normal for the enjoyment of the Monument’s visitors. A number of volunteers stepped forward as well as some additionally volunteering for former Forest Service positions,” said O’Toole. “The results of this are that the Monument is operating close to normal although some days there is a strain on the people who are there.”
O’Toole cautions, “What happens next year is anybody’s guess. Financially CRIA will not be able to fund additional personnel in the coming years. Will Chimney Rock National
Monument have to shut down?” O’Toole accepts that admonition from the old desert rat Ed Abbey (1927-1989) who once proclaimed, “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
Ernie is a public land patriot, which means for him more hours at the monument greeting people and helping them to understand the site’s Ancestral Puebloan legacy with the stone walls, kivas and proximity to two rock spires. On an 18.6-year cycle the moon lingers between the two stone monuments at one of the few lunar standstill sites in the world. Chimney Rock is the definitive Chaco Canyon outlier.
At Chimney Rock and across the West, volunteers are stepping up. As for beleaguered federal employees, I’ve been delighted to see a new bumper sticker. Bumper stickers tell us a lot about ourselves. This one features a stern, unsmiling Smokey Bear head and in bold capital letters the word RESIST.
Let us honor and congratulate our public land volunteers, but also celebrate the land itself. Stretching north from Bayfield and Pagosa Springs, south from Silverton and east of the Animas River into portions of the Rio Grande National Forest is the Weminuche Wilderness, named after one of the seven Ute bands. The largest wilderness in Colorado, the Weminuche at 499,781 acres sprawls across 780 square miles. Access is on foot or on horseback to maintain a sense of America’s pioneer past and those values of self-sufficiency, endurance and resilience that are essential in backcountry travel. Half a century ago enlightened politicians from both political parties voted to add the Weminuche to the nation’s wilderness preservation system.
“Wild for the Weminuche”: as it turns fifty years old this year, will be a night of storytelling on October 23 from 6:30-9 p.m. at the Powerhouse at 1333 Camino del Rio in Durango. Sponsored by the San Juan Citizens Alliance, San Juan Mountains Association and Maria’s Bookshop, what an opportunity to talk about hiking and camping in the wilderness, exploring La Ventana or “the window,” and the headwaters of the Rio Grande. In the Weminuche one of the last grizzly bears in the state became trapped in a meadow aptly named by the Spanish more than two and a half centuries ago – La Rincon de La Osa or “hiding place of the bear.”
Come commemorate political collaboration fifty years ago and celebrate current stewardship by public land patriots. For hunters, hikers, climbers and horseback riders, public lands unite us. We often take a hike; it’s time to give back.
Andrew Gulliford is an award-winning author and editor and a professor of history at Fort Lewis College. He can be reached at gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu.
