Forest Service Trail Maintenance Hits 15-Year Low Amid Reorganization

Aurora, Colo. — May 5, 2026  |  By Alex Derr

An internal Forest Service report shows the agency maintained 22% fewer trail miles in 2025 — the lowest share meeting standard in 15 years — as a sweeping restructuring reshapes how trail work gets done across nearly 200 million acres of public land.

The U.S. Forest Service maintained 22% fewer miles of trail in 2025 than the year before, and the share of trails meeting agency standards fell to its lowest level in 15 years, according to an internal agency report obtained by The Washington Post and reported in December 2025.

Now, just as Colorado’s 2026 hiking season ramps up, the agency is in the middle of a sweeping reorganization announced March 31, 2026 — closing all 10 regional offices, moving its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, and reshaping how trail work gets supervised across nearly 200 million acres of public land.

For hikers preparing for a Colorado 14er, a backpacking trip in the Sawatch, or a weekend in the White River National Forest this summer, the convergence raises a practical question: will trails be open, safe, and adequately maintained? The picture is mixed — and worth understanding before you head out.

What the internal report found

The December 2025 report, prepared inside the Forest Service’s Washington Office and reported on by The Washington Post, paints a stark picture of an agency unable to keep pace with its own trail system. Among its findings:

• The agency maintained 22% fewer trail miles in 2025 than in 2024.
• The share of trail miles meeting agency standards dropped 19% — the lowest in 15 years.
• Some ranger districts lost up to 100% of their trail staff in 2025, costing the agency what the report described as hundreds of years of accumulated expertise — including specialists like stone masons, riggers, blasters, and animal packers who handle technical and remote backcountry work.
• Many districts cannot conduct basic trail maintenance, and deferred maintenance is “exponentially compounding,” the report stated.
• Millions of dollars in already-approved grant funds were returned because of staff vacancies and added administrative requirements.

The report described the on-the-ground result in plain language: “unpassable trails, unsafe bridges, and negative environmental impacts.”

Anonymous staff testimonials in the report described single employees now overseeing more than 200 miles of trail, and one district trail manager described going from a 20-person recreation staff to six. The Washington Trails Association, citing the same report, has called the situation the worst trail maintenance year for the Forest Service in 15 years.

The reorganization

In late March 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a major restructuring of the Forest Service, branded by the agency as a shift toward “common sense forest management” intended to push staff and resources closer to the ground. Under the plan:

• Forest Service headquarters will move from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, with about 260 D.C.-based employees scheduled to relocate by summer 2027.
• All 10 regional offices will close, replaced by a network of “operations service centers” in Fort Collins, Albuquerque, Athens (Ga.), Madison (Wis.), Missoula, and Placerville, Calif.
• The agency will transition to a state-based leadership model, with directors in roughly 15 states (some, like the Fort Collins office, covering multiple states).
• More than 50 research facilities are slated for closure or consolidation into a single research organization headquartered in Fort Collins.

Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz has framed the restructuring as a way to address a $3 billion deferred maintenance backlog the agency cannot afford to sustain at its current size. The reorganization will affect roughly 6,500 federal employees overall, according to the National Federation of Federal Employees.

The plan has drawn concern from much of Colorado’s congressional delegation. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have publicly questioned the timing, citing low snowpack, drought conditions, and the upcoming wildfire season. Gov. Jared Polis, by contrast, has supported the restructuring, arguing it will bring jobs to Colorado.

One precedent worth noting: when the Bureau of Land Management moved its headquarters out of Washington in 2020, an estimated 87% of affected employees left the agency rather than relocate, according to the Washington Trails Association. Trail advocates fear a similar pattern at the Forest Service — a concern echoed by retired White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams in interviews with regional Colorado outlets, who has said he supports streamlining at the headquarters level but is skeptical that the current plan will translate to more capacity on the ground.

Why this matters for Colorado

Few states feel this more acutely than Colorado. The Forest Service estimates that the state’s 14ers alone draw more than 311,000 visitor-use days per year, and that the agency would need at least $24 million to bring the roughly 220 miles of 14er trails on national forest land up to standard.

The White River National Forest — the most-visited national forest in the country — sits at the center of this. So do the Pike-San Isabel, the San Juan, the Arapaho-Roosevelt, and the Gunnison-Uncompahgre, which together host most of Colorado’s 14ers and the trails that access them.

Trail conditions on these peaks have long depended on a public-private partnership. The Colorado Fourteeners Initiative (CFI), the National Forest Foundation, the Colorado Mountain Club, and other groups carry a significant share of the on-the-ground work alongside Forest Service staff. CFI’s 2025 Nomad volunteer crew alone hosted 43 projects on 12 peaks, engaging 545 volunteers across 1,023 volunteer days. In 2026, CFI is scheduled to work on Mount Democrat, Quandary Peak, Mount Massive, San Luis Peak, Mount Sneffels, Mount Elbert, Wetterhorn Peak, Mount Columbia, Capitol Peak, and Mount Princeton, supported in part by a $250,000 state grant awarded in March 2025.

That partnership network has been a buffer against agency staffing shortfalls — but only a partial one. Federal staff coordinate volunteer projects, hold technical permits, sign off on engineering work, and supervise contracted crews. When those positions sit vacant, partner organizations have less capacity to deploy. (For more on related Colorado pressure points, see our coverage of 12 Colorado 14ers set for trail improvements and the impact of the public lands staff purge.)

What’s working in 2026

The picture is not uniformly bleak. Several factors are softening the impact heading into the 2026 season:

• Congress rejected the largest proposed cuts. The White House had requested a 60% cut to Forest Service trail maintenance for FY2026; Congress instead increased the budget by $2 million — a 10% bump — bringing total trail maintenance funding to roughly $22 million.
• Seasonal hiring is back. On February 12, 2026, the Forest Service announced plans to hire up to 2,000 summer seasonal positions — a reversal from the freeze on non-fire seasonal hiring that defined 2024 and 2025. Application windows for most positions closed in early March, and crews are being onboarded now.
• Partner organizations remain active. Colorado granted CFI $250,000 in March 2025 to fund trail maintenance and reconstruction on 12 14ers across the 2025–2026 seasons, and the National Forest Foundation’s “Find Your Fourteener” campaign continues to channel private dollars into Colorado trail work.

Looking further out, the picture is less clear. The White House’s FY2027 budget proposal, released in April 2026, would cut the Forest Service’s “Recreation, Heritage and Wilderness” account by 31% — cuts the Washington Trails Association estimates would translate to a 64% reduction in trail maintenance funding. Those numbers will be debated in Congress over the coming months.

The Forest Service has long been the backbone of trail access in Colorado and across the West. The next 18 months — through reorganization, the FY2027 budget cycle, and another high-use summer — will determine whether the agency can rebuild its capacity or whether the gap on the ground continues to widen. For now, the safest assumption is that more of the trail experience will fall to you and to the partner organizations supporting the public lands you love.