Frank Church Wilderness to allow chain saws......

[BuzzH]

Never did but the smartass remark is really helpful.

Detail about staff added to cover the Wilderness Act along with the other Acts you list is what I was hoping someone had access to. Stuff like that could be really helpful for people understand where the increases are used and needed. It's just too easy to say, "we need more money and people." I could easily look at the data and come to the conclusion that the FS has more than doubled in size since the Wilderness Act was enacted so there should be more than enough people to run those crosscuts, perform those ESA reviews, comply with NEPA, etc. Or I could determine that all 17,000 are fighting fires. Or I could conclude they are all administrative folks that drink a lot of coffee. I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle, would be great to know for sure.

The entire FS employee rolls in 1964 were 13,000 according to your numbers...there's now almost that many just assigned to fire, 11,000+.

The workload, mandates, Acts, responsibilities, demands, etc. from Congress and the public have only increased since 1964.

Budgets have been slashed while demands have increased. Something has to give, we had this discussion. Deferred maintenance has consequences, but there isn't the man power or money to do it.

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit...

 

[WyoCoalMiner]

The entire FS employee rolls in 1964 were 13,000 according to your numbers...there's now almost that many just assigned to fire, 11,000+.

The workload, mandates, Acts, responsibilities, demands, etc. from Congress and the public have only increased since 1964.

Budgets have been slashed while demands have increased. Something has to give, we had this discussion. Deferred maintenance has consequences, but there isn't the man power or money to do it.

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit...

Does the FS publish yearly information on number of people assigned to trail maintenance per year? Would be really curious to see what that number was in 1960, 1990, 2010, today. I was able to find some very recent information that the DOGE shit from last year has severely impacted trail crews last year and today but I am not able to find numbers by year. Wondering how today's numbers compare to the 1960's, when we cared about the resource.

 

[BuzzH]

Does the FS publish yearly information on number of people assigned to trail maintenance per year? Would be really curious to see what that number was in 1960, 1990, 2010, today. I was able to find some very recent information that the DOGE shit from last year has severely impacted trail crews last year and today but I am not able to find numbers by year. Wondering how today's numbers compare to the 1960's, when we cared about the resource.

Well, I asked the Med Bow District Ranger about the trails in a couple of the wilderness areas in the mullen fire a few weeks back. They haven't had a single trail crew person for a long time, he actually laughed when I asked about how long they haven't had a trail crew.

The BT out of Afton had 2 really old school teachers that would do about 2.5 months of trail work...that was the "trail crew" there. They quit a number of years back and as far as I know, they don't have anybody now.

Way less today...almost non-existent.

 

[TexanSam]

I don't have the time or patience to nitpick and properly quote everyone but one theme I'm noticing here is that some are making the "all or nothing" argument. Why does it have to be that way? In the days of electric chainsaws and such, why can't they make a provision to the rules saying "motors may be used for critical infrastructure maintenance by specifically FS employees and their contractors, and the scope of use must be clearly defined in writing prior to use" or something of that nature?