Prickly Pear Land Trust’s upcoming trail season will be the most uncertain in our 30 years of operation. In a typical March, we would have a solid foundation for the upcoming trail season—we would have plans, crews, volunteer days, and funding sorted. We would be turning our attention from the what to the how.
This year is unprecedented. The Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest (HLCNF), our long-time partner and cost-share contributor, has been caught up in the restructuring and defunding of many parts of the federal government. Federal layoffs have targeted the U.S. Forest Service. With 18 million acres of national forest lands, Montana is hit especially hard. Across the state, you should expect closed gates and campgrounds, uncleared trails, and unmaintained restrooms. Our region is no different.
As we go to print, over 40 HLCNF personnel have been fired, retired, or will not be rehired for the season. The Helena Ranger District recreation team is now down to one employee, and just a handful of staff remain to care for the 2.8 million acres of HLCNF land. Additional federal layoffs will be disastrous for local conservation and recreation. There is no guarantee that those two recreation staff–decades-long public servants, friends of PPLT, and fellow community members–will still have jobs in June.
PPLT and other volunteer groups will do what we can to help this season, but this is like putting a band-aid on a severed artery. Even with our expertise and tremendous volunteer support, this year will challenge our trails team. To be fully transparent, PPLT could lose $160,000 of partner funding for trail maintenance this year alone. Unfortunately, even if HLCNF gives us the green light to proceed on long-planned projects, we can’t know whether there will be a Forest Service to reimburse us. Will they have staff? Are they writing checks? Have funds been diverted? We don’t know when we’ll have answers to those questions.
One thing is very certain: We need good people to swing tools for our local trails and public lands. If you’d like to volunteer with PPLT or set up a trail work day for your business, please contact us. Sign up on our website or email our Trails and Parks Manager, Tim Lawrence, at [email protected]. We need all the help we can get.
Happy. Undaunted. Trails.
Nate Kopp is the Program and Trails Director at PPLT.
