The work of clearing 300 fallen trees from the Colorado Trail near Waterton Canyon last summer was backbreaking and exhausting — and for the U.S. Forest Service, nearly free.
“The Forest Service was hopeful that they could clear the trail, but they just didn’t have the manpower to get it done,” said Bill Manning, managing director of the Colorado Trail Foundation.
“So we brought the bulk of the labor,” Manning said, and “cut apart the trees for them.”
The trail group provided nearly $10,000 in labor over three days for the project, which reopened the trail after a blow-down.
Increasingly, the federal forest agency is leaning on so-called partner groups and their weekend volunteers to cover for budget shortfalls.
In 2006, the last year for which figures are available, partners — from nonprofit conservation groups to businesses such as Coors Brewing Co. — contributed more than $12.2 million in labor and cash for projects in Colorado.
Across the Rocky Mountain region — which includes public lands in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming — the Forest Service said it was able to turn $28.6 million in seed money into $61.4 million in work on the ground.
Except for fire suppression, the Forest Service budget has remained flat since 2002, and the Bush administration is proposing a 22 percent cut for the coming year. The cut includes slashing programs like trails by nearly a third.
“It’s just a matter of overall priorities, and we have a war and a deficit,” said Greg Warren, agency administrator for the Continental Divide Trail.
“We’re working more with volunteers to stretch the dollars,” Warren said.
One group singled out by Rick Cables, the Forest Service’s regional forester, is the Friends of the Dillon Ranger District, which raised $1 million in the past four years for programs such as trail maintenance and ranger patrols.
“It’s really an exercise in passion,” Cables said.
While trail work often is considered the classic form of forest volunteerism, organizations also are undertaking less-glamorous tasks such as removing noxious weeds and collecting seeds from native plants.
“Where there’s a need, there are groups developing around meeting that capacity,” said Bob Finch, deputy director of the Outdoor Stewardship Institute, a branch of Volunteers for Outdoors Colorado.
While those contributions don’t fully cover the agency’s unmet needs, Finch said, “without efforts of volunteers, things would be much worse.”
For their efforts, volunteers get a sense of ownership of public lands, said Jan Engert, director of the agency’s national partnership office in Washington, D.C.
“There’s a lot of mutual benefit,” Engert said. “People want to get involved. And where they get the most excited is at the local level.”
The reliance on partners isn’t a bad thing, as long as the work is being completed and conflicts of interest are avoided, said Andy Stahl, executive director of the watchdog group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.
“It is the responsibility of the Forest Service to ensure that good work gets done, the right work gets done, and that it gets done well,” Stahl said.
Steve Lipsher: 970-513-9495 or slipsher@denverpost.com
