Wilderness Service Volunteers Strain to Backfill Labor Deficits on Public Land

On May 12, Greg Schatz and his all-volunteer work crew from the Back Country Horsemen of the Flathead started digging a solar-powered water system at the Meadow Creek trailhead, a prominent gateway to the Bob Marshall Wilderness near Spotted Bear. Although the longtime horse packer said the job is a little outside his crew’s field of expertise, a federal workforce reduction has hobbled the Flathead National Forest’s backcountry staff, leaving it up to Schatz and his fleet of wilderness service volunteers to backfill the labor deficit.

With much of that shortage spread across the remote reaches of the Bob, however, the work demands a specialized skillset. Crosscut saws need sharpening, and they need a practiced sawyer at either end to cut and clear trails. Horse and mule packers like Schatz haul supplies in carefully bundled canvas tarps called manties, which are affixed to a pack string using roping configurations with names like “basket hitch” and “crows foot.” All summer long, these highly trained teams perform the work that hikers and horses depend on — from trail restoration to backcountry facility maintenance — so they can prowl this sacred patch of public land.

The gig building the water pump at Meadow Creek is nearly 70 miles south of the nearest town of Hungry Horse; if Schatz forgets a tool or needs to run to the hardware store, that’s 70 miles of washboarded gravel road running the length of the Hungry Horse Reservoir. Schatz has pledged to have the job done by Memorial Day.

Then it’s on to the next job, and the next one after that.

“Our year is full,” Schatz said. “Between trail projects and education and outreach, we can do about 16 or 18 projects and we’re at capacity. We might be able to take on one or two more. But we started at the end of March and we will go through the end of October or into November, and our schedule is full.”

Volunteer groups across the Flathead Valley are stretched thin and in new directions as they strive to patch holes perforating the ranks of the U.S. Forest Service, punched, seemingly at random, to Schatz’s thinking, by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose efforts to trim the U.S. Forest Service have left a skeleton crew to operate the Flathead National Forest’s remote ranger stations.

Based on Schatz’s 35 years of experience patrolling the Bob as a volunteer packer, losing dozens of backcountry ranger station staffers for even a single season is catastrophic; but the permanent loss of those programs would signal the end of an era.

“I’m not worried about getting that water system done, but we are panicking about trails not getting cleared and losing the continuation of the backcountry skills that trail crew leaders have passed down across generations,” Schatz said. “That’s what has us concerned. Our nonprofit isn’t going to fold, but we’re not going to be able to make up for what’s lost due to these cuts.”

At the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation (BMWF), Cliff Kipp has a full docket of more than 30 projects he’s looking to staff with about 400 volunteers. He’s also seeking recruits to join the Great Bear Trail Posse, which provides an opportunity for members of the public to receive basic training and access to tools to conduct trail maintenance independently on their own schedule.

“We are really fortunate that people have responded to the news about the agency and very generously view volunteer opportunities through us and our partner organizations as a way to help,” Kipp said. “If there’s not an agency presence in the field, there has to be some presence in the field. Otherwise, what is going to happen to those 6.5 million acres if nobody is watching.”

But even if Kipp’s reinforcements can help keep watch over the Bob, “there’s no filling the gap with volunteers and a few trail technicians.”

“We’re not stemming the flow of blood, we’re not even stopping the bleeding,” Kipp said. “We’re just doing something. We will have warm bodies on the ground this summer, but the capacity of our operation to run volunteers hasn’t increased. Our work is just going to be that much more valuable this year because there are fewer Forest Service personnel on the ground.”

In his role leading BMWF, Kipp has marshaled about 30 seasonal staff who can help out Forest Service staff this summer: four trail technicians, two packer apprentices, one journeyman packer, four weeds interns, 13 wilderness stewardship interns, and six crew leaders overseeing the volunteer projects.

“These people are resilient. They’re going to make do with what they have,” Kipp said, referring to what remains of the Forest Service’s workforce. “But right now, all they have is volunteers and what’s left of the federal workforce. Otherwise, I don’t know what’s left out there.”

In addition to BMWF, what’s left this summer are groups like the Back Country Horsemen, the Boy Scouts of America, local Rotary Clubs, the Mission Mountain Youth Crew Program, and Montana Conservation Corps, whose volunteers are rising to the occasion and “rallying to support the work,” Kipp said.

But in the past months, the Trump administration has even tightened the vise grips on the volunteers.

Kipp, who previously served as regional director of the Montana Conservation Corps, said the value of AmeriCorps volunteers in particular “cannot be overstated.” So, in late April, when 32,000 AmeriCorps members across the United States were abruptly removed from service following a $400 million funding rescission and sweeping cuts to the agency under DOGE, Kipp was crestfallen.

“Part of what makes AmeriCorps awesome is just how cost effective it is to mobilize bodies and get them into community service sectors where they do amazing work,” Kipp said. 

The cuts to AmericaCorps have reached Montana, resulting in the sudden termination of approximately 80 AmeriCorps members serving across dozens of host sites statewide. The Trump administration also fired most AmeriCorps staff last month. 

“It was a devastating weekend for the AmeriCorps community,” said Jono McKinney, CEO and president of the Montana Conservation Corps. Nationally, over 1,000 AmeriCorps grantees received grant termination letters, impacting 32,000 AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps Seniors members, McKinney said. Approximately 80% of all AmeriCorps state and national grantees were targeted for grant terminations — totaling nearly $400 million in grant awards. He said that 98% of state competitive programs were eliminated, including programs in Montana, such as the State Park AmeriCorps, AgCorps, Campus Compact VISTA, and others.

Gavin Wisdom, MCC’s regional director based in the Flathead, said MCC “is lucky not to be among those targeted by these cuts.”

“Both our National Direct grant supporting our Field Crews, Youth Programs, Conservation Interns and Fellows, and Piikuni Lands Crews, and our Big Sky Watershed Corps grant through the Governor’s Office of Community Service, appear to have been spared from these cuts at this time,” Wisdom said in an email. “We don’t know if there will be any further actions by DOGE, but I’m hopeful the weekend carnage was the last of these cuts.”

For Kipp, who serves on the Montana AmeriCorps Alumni Council, the combined cuts have gutted a federal agency created three decades ago as a way for people to serve their country.

“This loss affects more than just the members who answered the call to serve. It directly harms the communities that depend on them. Montana members whose positions were cut were actively contributing to agricultural education, environmental conservation, afterschool programs, mental health outreach, food security, tax assistance, and poverty alleviation,” according to a statement from the Montana AmeriCorps Alumni Council.

AmeriCorps has long enjoyed bipartisan support — for good reason, Kipp said. A 2023 research study revealed that every $1 invested in AmeriCorps returns over $17 in measurable value. Since 1994, over 11,000 Montanans have served their state and country through the program, contributing more than 11 million hours of service and earning $28.5 million in education awards.

AmeriCorps also provides an introduction for young people to new dimensions of civil service, and Kipp personally mentored scores of youths who found purpose in their volunteerism, leading them to pursue jobs in federal civil service.

“People I hired at MCC who found career paths at the U.S. Forest Service are now totally disenchanted,” Kipp said. “I spent 20 years of my professional life opening a gateway to public lands and civil service, so to see that degraded, it’s just hard to watch.”

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