MOUNT BAKER-SNOQUALMIE NATIONAL FOREST — Josh Watson was preparing for a banner year clearing trails and repairing bridges in Seattle’s proverbial backyard. A forestry technician at the Snoqualmie Ranger District in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, he was expecting the imminent return of a three-person crew under him from April to October, the arc of the snow-free season when the bulk of trail work gets done in Washington.
But the Trump administration’s February dismissal of 125 U.S. Forest Service personnel in Washington, coupled with a Biden administration decision not to hire seasonal employees, amounts to a double whammy for the Evergreen State’s trails. The job cuts, predominantly to recreation staff, were part of the new administration’s firing of thousands of federal workers on Valentine’s Day.
Watson, who was weeks away from the end of his probationary period at the time, is now out of a job. Politico reported Monday that the Forest Service has begun rehiring some probationary employees who work on timber management, but as of press time, recreation staffers The Seattle Times interviewed for this story have not been rehired, and the Trump administration has since announced plans for large-scale formal layoffs.
Heading into summer hiking and camping season, these decisions mean an already lean Forest Service staff will now be stretched even thinner, prompting concerns that large swaths of Washington state’s federally owned public land, especially in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests, will go unpatrolled and unmaintained.
These two forests are among the nation’s most popular, combining to attract over 5 million visitors annually. Backcountry routes will likely be cleared of downed trees more slowly and may close entirely if bridges fail or trails wash out when there is no recreation staff left to hike out and fix them. Having fewer wilderness rangers to assist hikers and climbers in distress also heightens the likelihood of additional search-and-rescue missions. The few remaining Forest Service employees will likely concentrate on bare minimum front-country tasks like stocking bathrooms, emptying trash bins and opening campgrounds.
Representatives from Washington’s five national forests, the Pacific Northwest regional office and the Washington, D.C., office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Forest Service manages roughly 11.6 million acres in Washington, or a little over one-quarter of the state’s total land area. Outside three national parks — which are facing their own hiring freeze and mass firing, although to a lesser extent, and with some seasonal jobs already restored — the state’s five national forests encompass most of the high country and many of the foothills in the Cascades and Olympics, plus a mountainous section of northeast Washington.
While the state’s robust network of trail advocates and volunteers will do their best to step up, there are critical tasks — like managing human waste in the backcountry and checking hiker permits — that only trained Forest Service personnel can perform. What’s more, most of those let go were younger employees early in their careers.
“I fear that the Forest Service is at risk of losing the next generation of natural resource managers and leaders,” said retired Snoqualmie District Ranger Martie Schramm, Watson’s former boss.
Prepping for the season
Watson, 31, grew up in Michigan and joined the Forest Service eight years ago. He dropped out of engineering school and drifted through odd jobs until he signed up to do trail work in Arizona with a conservation nonprofit. He’d found his calling.
“It was meaningful labor, and I was tired every day in a very satisfying way,” Watson said.
The Forest Service offered a pathway to a career in trail work. After seasonal jobs from the Tongass in southeast Alaska to the Lolo in western Montana, Watson realized Mount Baker-Snoqualmie was his dream posting, with an ideal combination of rugged mountain trails and easy access to the creature comforts of a big city. The Forest Service minted Watson as a permanent employee in March 2024, and he found rental housing in Bellevue with his wife, who relocated with him to Washington sight unseen.
On Wednesday, with spring on the horizon, Watson drove out to Middle Fork Road outside North Bend, one of the Snoqualmie Ranger District’s most popular spots, to show The Seattle Times what kind of work might not get done in his absence.
At the campground, he sized up dying trees at risk of falling that need to be cut down before opening for the season. While hiking the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Trail, he inspected bridges for structural soundness. Unable to help himself, he kicked branches to the side of the trail as he walked and swept the remains of an illegal campfire out of a parking lot. Spotting fresh graffiti tags on road signs, he’s anticipating an uptick in this kind of abuse to the landscape.
In his permanent staff role, Watson had championed making long-term plans for his jurisdiction — which encompasses many of Seattle’s most popular day hikes to places like Snow Lake, Denny Creek and Snoquera Falls. He also advocated for his entire seasonal crew to return this year — arguing that continuity would allow them to hit the trail running with a team trained in specialized skills like wilderness first aid and tree felling techniques.
This summer, Watson’s goal was to comb some 600 miles of trail. The sooner blowdowns were removed, the more time his crew would have to assess hiker and horse bridges that weather quickly under the pounding rain, howling winds and heavy snows that are the signature of winter weather on the west side of the Cascade crest.
But in September, the Forest Service announced a freeze on hiring seasonal employees due to budget constraints, while trumpeting its plan to convert some 1,300 to 1,400 employees to permanent status. The enterprising Watson devised a plan to combine forces with the district’s only other trail lead (whose anticipated seasonal worker was also nixed). As a duo, they embraced the challenge of undertaking the same amount of work previously done by six people across two teams.
“We can remove 150 downed trees on a good day,” Watson said. “We’re highly qualified, and we’ve been around a long time.”
In mid-February, just a few weeks before his probationary status ended, a supervisor left Watson a voicemail. He had been swept up in the Trump administration’s mass firings. In five months, the Snoqualmie Ranger District’s trail crews shrunk from an anticipated six people to zero.
Hits keep on coming
According to 10 current and former Washington-based Forest Service employees, the firings affected predominantly front-line staffers like wilderness rangers and trail crews in recreation departments across the areas most popular with Seattle hikers — the northern half of the Washington Cascades, which is split between the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests. In total, 81 employees across those two forests lost their jobs in the firings, according to figures compiled by the National Federation of Federal Employees.
“We’re losing almost the entirety of our on-the-ground recreation workforce,” said Betsy Robblee, conservation and advocacy director at Seattle-based outing club The Mountaineers.
That includes staffers who — for $22-26 per hour — dig pit toilets at popular backcountry campsites, issue citations for drone use in wilderness areas, assess conditions along hiking and climbing routes and clear blowdowns on remote sections of trail that volunteer groups are unlikely to reach.
“We get an incredibly good deal from these hardworking employees,” said Robblee. “Cutting these jobs is not an efficient or smart way to cut government spending.”
In a statement, Republican House Rep. Dan Newhouse, whose district encompasses chunks of the Okanogan-Wenatchee and Gifford Pinchot, wrote: “I have communicated to the Trump administration that a strong, well-trained federal workforce is essential and there should be a more nuanced approach to terminations and furloughs. I agree that the federal workforce and related spending needs to be reduced, but we must ensure our national forests remain appropriately staffed ahead of fire season.”
The firings also included the entire recreation staff assigned to the Enchantments. Now, that 75-square-mile fragile alpine zone, one of the most sought-after overnight hiking permits in the country, faces the prospect of a single patroller. A lone ranger is unlikely to have the bandwidth to coordinate helicopters to fly out accumulated human waste and check backpackers for permit compliance.
“There is no plan for removing 9,000 pounds of human waste this year,” said fired hiking and climbing ranger Owen Wickenheiser.
Rangers also assist with search-and-rescue operations, the frequency of which has increased steadily year over year this decade, according to the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office.
“The USFS backcountry rangers play a critical role in the Enchantments,” wrote the office’s Emergency Management Specialist Rich Magnusson. “By having them in the Enchantments on a regular basis, they are able to mitigate a lot of issues before they turn into a situation that requires a SAR response by the sheriff’s office.”
Stretched thin
Outdoor recreation flourishes year-round in Washington’s national forests. According to the Washington Trails Association, some 9,000 miles of hiking trails crisscross this treasure trove of public land. Some of these trails date to footpaths used by the region’s Indigenous inhabitants, the first to explore Washington’s forests and mountains, and most were blazed during the 20th century as the hiking and mountaineering scenes blossomed.
But the Forest Service has long struggled to keep the state’s trail infrastructure in working order, which has only been compounded by the drastic staff reductions.
“The Forest Service has been chronically underfunded and understaffed for decades as the number of people getting out on our public lands has continued to increase,” said WTA Chief Program Officer Kindra Ramos. “Public lands are a resource for the next generation, and right now we’re not even taking care of them for the people that want to go out tomorrow.”
This story has been updated to clarify that the Washington Trails Association organized 70,000 hours of volunteer work on National Forest trails last year.
In fiscal year 2023, the Forest Service estimated that its deferred maintenance backlog — which includes not only trails but also roads, bridges, buildings and dams — reached $8.6 billion. Meanwhile, Congress has showered the Forest Service with billions of dollars in the past five years for infrastructure projects, presenting a once-in-a-generation opportunity to chip away at the backlog. Some money has trickled down to Washington state, paying for much-needed road repairs on the way to Mount Pilchuck and sprucing up heavily trafficked trails to alpine lakes along I-90.
But while some of this work can be done by contractors and nonprofits like WTA and Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, the Forest Service calls the shots as federal land manager. Forest Service employees coordinate infrastructure projects, ensuring that work complies with federal environmental regulations and according to specifications in the agency’s own handbook.
Now there will be fewer staffers to manage that work, much less pick up a shovel.
“We have to have them to plan projects,” said Kathy Young, public lands chair for the Back Country Horsemen of Washington, whose 2,000 members volunteer to keep trails open for equines. “Without anybody in these offices at the ground level, that’s not going to happen.”
Washington benefits from a robust network of volunteers who fan out every year across public lands.
Watson, the fired trail lead, observed several freshly cut trees on the Middle Fork Trail that were not his handiwork — likely undertaken by hikers who have a volunteer service agreement on file with the Forest Service. That proactive enthusiasm will help keep trails in shape this summer, although crews like Watson’s are typically quicker and more thorough. But he’s far less confident about the future health of the state’s trail system because larger projects, like rerouting a trail or repairing a bridge, are typically planned in the offseason.
“What bothers me is the cascading effect of something like bridge maintenance,” he said. “There’s no one in my role who can recognize when things are about to fail.”
Much of this year’s volunteer-led trail work will tentatively proceed as scheduled. The Back Country Horsemen, for example, are authorized to certify their own sawyers, and their statewide volunteer service agreement has no federal funding attached. Next month, they will head out to Packwood Lake in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and to LeBar Horse Camp in Olympic National Forest for the season’s first work parties.
But even if this year goes smoothly, “planning for the future is the most uncertain,” Young said.
The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust is still waiting on the Forest Service to reimburse $61,000 for work performed last year in places like Denny Creek Trailhead and I-90 Wildlife Bridge. Now the organization has doubts about $5 million in federal contracts for recreation and environmental projects.
WTA logged 70,000 volunteer hours on the state’s National Forest trails last year, from day trips to weeklong camp-outs by the Backcountry Response Team. About $800,000 of the organization’s $2 million in trail maintenance contracts in 2024 came from the Forest Service.
“We can try to do more, but volunteers aren’t free,” said Ramos, explaining that paid WTA staff run the volunteer program and provide supplies. “We don’t know if we can pick up the slack because coordination takes someone on the other end of the line.”
While WTA has in-house staff to manage work trips, it still relies on the Forest Service for direction and assistance. On remote overnight trips in the North Cascades, the agency’s pack mules and horses carry tools, food and supplies that support a half-dozen volunteer organizations. But the Methow Valley Ranger District’s lead packer was fired, as was the volunteer coordinator, leaving the future of the packing program in doubt.
Also, there are things WTA literally can’t do — it has neither the skill set nor the legal authority to fill potholes or empty toilets, Ramos said.
The safety implications of hollowing out the Forest Service are of paramount concern for Ramos, who sees the Trump administration’s recent moves as dissolving the social contract between the people and their government.
“Part of the trust that we’ve put in the federal government around our public lands is that they are going to keep these places safe and sustainable,” Ramos said, “and that means providing the infrastructure for people to visit them as well.”
