White River National Forest Supervisor Brian Glaspell had some rare good news about staffing for Pitkin County commissioners at a work session earlier this month — although what qualifies as good news has shifted in recent years.
“We’re in pretty good shape,” he said. Glaspell was referring to the fact that the forest was able to hire seasonal workers going into the summer season, which is a major improvement from 2025, when the U.S. Forest Service operated under a near-total hiring freeze for seasonal workers.
Going into this summer, Glaspell told the Board of County Commissioners, the White River National Forest was able to hire 25 seasonal workers and 40 interns through a partnership with the Rocky Mountain Youth Corp.
“That’s about two-thirds of normal,” he said.
The White River National Forest is also employing about two-thirds the number of full-time, year-round staff that it had in 2024. Aspen Journalism analyzed White River National Forest organizational charts for the past three years obtained through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests. Those charts, combined with independent reporting, show that there are currently 111 employees across the 2.3-million acre forest, compared with 169 staffers in 2024. The analysis does not include those working in the fire program.
Although Aspen Journalism worked to identify trends and programs with particular shortfalls, it’s important to note that the reduction in the Forest Service workforce did not follow strategic goals beyond simply reducing the numbers of workers. All departments/programs at the White River National Forest have seen reductions in the workforce, except the forest leadership team, which has been able to fill positions with Forest Service employees who have left other roles within the agency. Recreation, engineering and specialist roles have been particularly hard-hit.
Less than a month into the second Donald Trump administration, mass layoffs were issued to more than 3,400 probationary Forest Service employees nationwide, affecting dozens working for the White River National Forest. A court order later deemed these firings illegal and employees were offered their jobs back.
Many former employees chose to leave through the Trump administration programs incentivizing resignations and early retirement, while others left to pursue career growth and opportunities outside of the federal government.
Officials at the White River National Forest declined interview requests and did not respond directly to specific questions but instead sent Aspen Journalism a statement ensuring that the forest “continues to meet public needs.”
The employment challenges at the Forest Service pre-date the Trump administration efforts to cull the federal workforce. The agency has been severely limiting hiring from outside its ranks since mid-2024.
The agency has not reopened positions to outside hiring, except for firefighting and seasonal positions.
In June 2024, then-Forest Service Chief Randy Moore announced the results of a hiring assessment and wrote, “The Office of the Chief will approve future hiring of external candidates using a set of criteria. We will focus on the highest priority positions needed to protect public health and safety, to fulfill critical mission deliverables, as well as positions that are highly specialized and/or have been demonstrated to be very difficult to fill internally.”
The ongoing lack of external hiring has meant that some vacancies can last for years, and former employees see this as a sign of dark days ahead.
With a third of the White River National Forest workforce gone in the past two years and extreme restrictions on recruiting new staff, “Where’s our bench?” asked Scott Fitzwilliams, a former White River National Forest supervisor who participated in the Trump administration’s deferred-resignation program, disillusioned after overseeing what he saw as an unjust mass firing; he stepped down in March 2025 but has remained engaged with the forest. “Where’s the next generation of people coming in?”
There remains a lack of opportunity to recruit and hire for entry-level positions, outside of a limited number of seasonal workers.
“As we plan for future seasons, we will continue to recruit seasonal employees and engage the next generation of conservation leaders,” the White River National Forest statement reads. “We remain focused on developing employees and strengthening partnerships so we can manage the forest effectively into the future.”
But Fitzwilliams says these limited opportunities do not go far enough to replenish what has been lost.
“You can compare it to an elk herd,” Fitzwilliams said. “If you’re not recruiting calves into the herd, at some point the herd is going to really suffer.”
Leadership exodus plagues White River
At the highest level of leadership on the White River National Forest, five of 11 current staff members that make up the Forest Leadership Team are new to the forest and their positions since February 2025. That team consists of leaders of each ranger district and staff officers who oversee forestwide programs.
There is a new forest supervisor, a new deputy forest supervisor, a new staff officer leading the engineering and minerals program, a new staff officer leading the renewable resources and planning program, and a new district ranger. A second district ranger position, on the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District, remains vacant. None of the new leaders were trained by their predecessor but rather filled vacant positions months or years later.
“These are critical positions,” Fitzwilliams said. “People are doing double duty.”
The Aspen-Sopris Ranger District serves as an example. Former District Ranger Kevin Warner left the Forest Service to take a job with Pitkin County in October. Jennifer Schuller, then the deputy district ranger, stepped in as interim district ranger, with no one backfilling her former position. Schuller is currently out on medical leave, Glaspell told Pitkin County commissioners at the May 12 work session. During this time, Brent Davidson is filling in that key role, in what Glaspell described as an “acting-acting ranger” capacity.
“We have one really critical vacancy on the forest and that is the permanent district ranger on the Aspen-Sopris district,” Glaspell told commissioners. “Brent has stepped in and is going to do this as long as I can keep him convinced to do it. He’s a really excellent guy to be doing this because his day job, as he mentioned, is functionally as our forest fire management officer.”
That’s the top fire official for the White River National Forest, and he is now pulling double duty as the leader of a large and very busy ranger district, without a deputy. The Forest Service is actively looking to hire a permanent district ranger; the position is posted for internal candidates.
Fitzwilliams is not optimistic that the forest will be able to backfill all of the leadership positions with qualified staffers.
With a restructuring of the agency underway that includes moving headquarters to Salt Lake City, staffers are moving into positions for which they may not be qualified across the entire Forest Service system, Fitzwilliams said. It may be a worker from the national office in Washington, D.C., with very little forest-level experience moving into a leadership position, or someone stepping in to fill a gap in a high-needs area with which they don’t have direct experience.
“It’s that institutional knowledge out the door,” Fitzwilliams said. “We’re putting people into key leadership positions who don’t have that scope of how things work and where to go for help or how to work through a particular problem.”
It’s a problem that is growing in two directions: On one hand, Fitzwilliams noted that the leaders who used to coach and teach the next generation are leaving the forest, and at the same time, there is very little new blood coming up the pipeline.
The Aspen-Sopris and Dillon ranger districts each have been lacking deputy rangers since fall and summer, respectively, of 2025, and Fitzwilliams said those positions are being eliminated throughout the Forest Service system.
“As they become vacant, they won’t be filled,” he predicted. But, he said, they are critical positions, both operationally and for developing the next generation of leaders.
“It’s a proven way to develop good employees,” Fitzwilliams said of deputy district ranger positions. “Not having that is going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on the rangers. From an organizational perspective, we’re not developing the next set of line officers and leaders. With the pressures, demands and challenges, you need top students to fill those jobs to be successful.”
The White River National Forest has been able to fill some leadership-level vacancies with internal transfers.
Glaspell took over as acting forest supervisor in March 2025, shortly after Fitzwilliams left, and he was confirmed in the permanent role in June. He had been working as the Rocky Mountain regional director for strategic planning since 2023 and was previously the regional chief for the National Wildlife Refuge System in Alaska.
Alicia Bell Sheeter began working as the current deputy forest supervisor last summer. She previously worked as the assistant director of the office of tribal relations in the Washington, D.C., office.
The White River announced April 10 that longtime Forest Service employee David Ilse would be the district ranger in Dillon. Ilse spent the past nine years working as the public services staff officer for the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico and has experience managing recreation teams on the Chugach National Forest in Alaska, according to a news release.
Lance Kovel, the staff officer overseeing engineering and minerals at the White River National Forest, filled a position in January that had been vacant for about a year. He will manage a team that includes two civil engineers and one engineering tech, down from five civil engineers and a tech in 2025. Kovel last worked on the Uintah-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
Jon Thompson, the staff officer leading the renewable resources and planning program since January, filled a position that had been vacant since April 2025. He had been working remotely for the Eastern Region, after 16 years at the White River National Forest in recreation.
The forest appears to have given up on hiring a safety and occupational health program manager and an executive assistant for the forest leadership team; those positions were shown as vacant in January 2024 and 2025 and eliminated from the 2026 organizational chart.
Projects and planning stalled during turbulent 2025
Beyond the leadership turnover, staffing losses are widespread across most programs in the White River National Forest.
The Aspen-Sopris, Dillon and Rifle ranger districts are each down a wildlife biologist and one or two biological science technicians. Those districts also each lost a realty specialist, which is a highly specialized position that deals with any and all land-ownership, easement or use issues that arise on Forest Service lands.
This presents short-term challenges, including slowing land exchanges with local partners. Pitkin County is working with the Forest Service on two land swaps, one involving the 650-acre Snowmass Falls Ranch, which the county hopes to transfer to the White River National Forest, and the other involving land near the Wildwood river access point to North Star Nature Preserve. Even with full staffing, land-exchange processes can take years.
In the long term, without external entry-level hiring, when specialists retire or leave the agency, there will not be staff with the training and experience to replace them.
“It’s a big workload and it takes specialized expertise,” Fitzwilliams said. “In those areas, it’s just hard to replace.”
When these land experts leave, Fitzwilliams said, “It hits a district like Aspen-Sopris really hard” because of the checkerboard of mine claims, private land and infrastructure interspersed in the forest.
Shortly after Trump took office for the second time, the administration directed the firing of all probationary employees. Although this action was later ruled illegal in U.S. District Court in Northern District of California, it upended the lives of thousands of workers, including dozens who worked for the White River National Forest. Jamie Werner, a special-projects manager working on initiatives such as recreation management and river restoration plans at Camp Hale, was one such worker.
Werner traveled to Washington, D.C., to protest the mass firings and joined U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., at Trump’s March 4, 2025, joint address to Congress. Werner also gave an address to Senate Democrats, advocating for fair treatment of federal employees.
“I felt like I was advocating for not just Forest Service employees, but for all federal civil service employees to be treated with dignity and respect,” she recounted. “Secondly, I was there to advocate for continued stewardship of America’s beloved federal lands because these cuts were going to affect public lands.”
Shortly after that trip to Washington, a federal board ordered those probationary staffers who had been fired without cause be allowed to return to work, and Werner came back to the White River National Forest to find the number of co-workers she had “just crashing and burning” due to the combination of the probationary firings and the Trump administration’s push to downsize the agency.
“Every person you lose takes with them a wealth of knowledge,” Werner said.
Werner’s position required coordination of a wide range of experts such as archaeologists, biologists and realty specialists.
“All of a sudden, you’re looking at constant delays,” Werner said. “Losing even one specialist makes a big difference. It’s a web. If you lose one piece, it can have a big impact on the ability to get things done.”
Werner and other federal workers hit another roadblock when the government shut down for 43 days beginning Oct. 1. Shortly thereafter, Werner left the Forest Service to take a job as senior conservation project manager for Eagle County’s open space and natural resources department.
She said work did continue in her time back at the White River National Forest between the illegal firing and the furlough.
“A lot of good work has been able to continue because the planning had already been done for those projects,” Werner said. “So something we’re all thinking about in the land-management realm is what’s it going to look like in five years?”
Werner is not alone in the concern for future projects.
Without specialists to spearhead work, build relationships and track down funding, Fitzwilliams said many of the best projects in the White River National Forest would not have happened. He pointed to former Aspen-Sopris Ranger District wildlife biologist Phil Nyland’s work on a wildlife habitat improvement plan as an example. Nyland left the agency in May 2025.
Ranger districts and recreation programs lean heavily on partners
The five ranger districts across the White River National Forest are each operating with fewer staff members than they were two years ago, and the biggest losses are in those districts with large recreation programs.
The Aspen-Sopris Ranger District’s recreation program declined by more than half in one year, from 16 staff members in 2025 to seven heading into this summer. The Dillon Ranger District’s recreation staff dropped by more than half from 2024, when there were 11 employees. There are now five. The Eagle-Holy Cross Ranger District’s recreation team fell by 36% in those two years, from 14 employees in 2024 to nine this year.
Recreation across those three ranger districts accounts for much of the heaviest visitation in the famously busy White River National Forest. These districts include all 11 of the forest’s ski resorts and many of its 14,000-foot mountain peaks and wilderness areas.
“By themselves, each of those three districts have more visitation and recreational use than 95% of entire national forests around the country,” Fitzwilliams said. “They’re very, very busy.”
He said that over his decades working in the Forest Service, he saw that the most successful way to serve the public and protect resources was to have boots on the ground.
“Given the significant reductions and the likely reductions in the future based on proposed budgets and reorganization, in no way shape or form can we say that we’re going to continue to meet the needs of the recreating public and care for the resource,” Fitzwilliams said. “It’s just not going to happen.”
Although many of the full-time positions in recreation remain vacant, the White River was able to hire some seasonal employees this year, an improvement over last summer’s situation in which staff shortages were compounded by a lack of seasonal workers.
Kendra Head, recreation management specialist for the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District, told Pitkin County commissioners earlier this month that she was able to hire four seasonal workers in her program area and 11 interns from the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, a longtime partner of the White River National Forest.
“Although we are not fully staffed, we have more boots on the ground this year than we did last year,” Head told commissioners at the meeting May 12.
Seasonal work can provide a pathway to permanent employment with the Forest Service. Those workers hired through internships such as the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps can, in some cases, earn the status to apply for internal jobs after working at least 640 hours.
The White River has a long history of staffing shortages, mirrored by a long history of partner organizations such as the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, numerous environmental and stewardship organizations and county governments stepping up to help protect public lands. That trend looks to continue and intensify.
“We work closely with counties, nonprofits, volunteers and youth corps to complete priority work across recreation, engineering, road maintenance, project review and visitor services,” Forest Service officials wrote in a prepared statement provided to Aspen Journalism. Notably, several longtime partners, including Roaring Fork Outdoor Volunteers and The Forest Conservancy, reported record levels of volunteers and hours of service in the White River National Forest in 2025.
Glaspell and other top-level White River National Forest officials recently asked Pitkin County to work toward taking over management and operations at the Maroon Bells Scenic Area beginning in 2027. Glaspell told commissioners that operations at the scenic area cost White River more than $300,000 each year, “and that’s not sustainable for the forest.”
Under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, the Forest Service can’t easily change fees to cover costs, but Head assured commissioners that it would be easier for Pitkin County, acting under a special use permit, to raise fees to cover the cost of managing the popular area.
Pitkin County already employs the Maroon Bells facilities and operations supervisor, Olivia Niosi. The county also provides funding for a seasonal employee who will primarily work at North Star and Independence Pass, and it covered costs associated with housing two winter volunteers at the Forest Service bunkhouse this past winter. The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department also hired two backcountry rangers to help patrol popular camping spots in the forest.
The board gave a preliminary greenlight to the request and directed staff to begin the process necessary to obtain a special use permit to run the popular area; the Forest Service would maintain ownership.
Fitzwilliams had a mixed reaction to the news.
“I love the idea of having communities integrated into the work we’re doing,” he said. “But we’re doing this because we’re broke.”
He said he was grateful that Pitkin County is able to step in and help the iconic spot, but he also was “extremely depressed and disappointed that this is where we’ve gotten.
“This is our future,” Fitzwilliams said. “Without resources and clean water and wild places, we don’t have the country that we once had.”
