No valuable career should be too expensive to work in.

Government outdoor recreation jobs pay too little and charge too much to make it a viable career for most.

Thank you to Justin Farrell (of “Billionaire Wilderness” fame) for sparking a discussion about recreation trails and labor.

“We only get to hire half the staff we’re actually hiring for” because there aren’t enough applicants, said Remo Fickler, a grizzled 23-year National Park Service veteran and trail crew supervisor in Yosemite, lamenting the decline.

To us, this indifference points to a problem of meaning, evinced by a worsening epidemic of loneliness, generational declines in civic engagement and a dwindling commitment to stewardship as honorable public service.

America’s Trails Are a Wonder, and They Need Our Help - Justin Farrell and Steven Ring

Farrell points to hiring issues as a national indifference for maintaining and building new trails in National Parks and Forests, among many other forms of public lands.

I’d rather point at USAJOBS, the primary method for applying for federal government jobs. When I search for trails positions in California, I come up with absolutely nothing.

How do you hire your staff and when you don’t allow people to apply?

Applying to federal positions is highly demanding: You need to format your resume very carefully to prevent automated systems from throwing out your application before it can be seen by a human eye.

Over the past 6 years, I’ve helped many motivated, prospective outdoor workers build their resumes to fit the federal standard, but it can’t guarantee that they will actually be hired for even the lowest pay grades in the NPS, Forest Service, or Bureau of Land Management, even as these agencies complain about staffing issues.

Botched background checks, surprise pre-season drug tests, and hidden requirements cause passionate workers to fall out of the application process—and now they’ll have to wait next year because these applications are usually open for a week or two before disappearing into the ether.

You can make a s little as $8100 in 6 months with the NPS.

And speaking of the lowest pay grades, National Park Service employees can be hired as low as a GS-03, which now amounts to about $27,000—$35,000 per year. In reality, most trails works are hired for up to 6 months at a time, so halve that to $13,500-$17,500 per year. And then factor in the cost of National Park Service housing, which is markedly higher than dorms and barracks provided for wildland firefighters—some NPS employees can pay $700-$900 per month for housing on park grounds. Let’s say they work for 6 months: That’s up to $5400 taken out of their seasonal earnings.

So yes, there can be an indifference to trail work when making it a career will earn you so little income.

Volunteering for trail work is appreciated, but is another driver for underpaying workers.

Volunteers are the bread and butter for government agencies and non-profits whose budgets are slim for paid trail workers. At the Texas Conservation Corps, I saw passionate volunteers help make the impossible possible with regards to new trail amenities and construction, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But there is an implication to relying on volunteers for a chunk of trail labor: That outdoor recreation work is a privilege, not a need. Wildland firefighters, who have been underpaid for at least the last 30 years, joke that they get paid in sunsets. By opting for the privilege of working outside, you should give up income appears to be the ethos of land management agencies.

Volunteers are the symbol of giving up income to provide for their community, but it posits a question: If we can maintain trails by paying people with “experiences”, why do we need to pay them money?

Land management agencies maintain this question by emphasizing the “adventure” of outdoor labor, preying on young, single adults that want to live an alternative lifestyle working outdoors, and are desperate enough to do so by giving up income.

But work is work, and you should be paid accordingly to the value you are providing others. If outdoor recreation is in fact growing by 4% year over year, then income should be increasing by the same percentage—year over year—to keep up with demand. Or else it is an underpaid and undervalued job.

And we see the results of undervaluing outdoor work:

Money can certainly help address the trail problems on federal lands, but that seems, like willing workers, in short supply. The National Park Service, which oversees 85 million acres, faces $23 billion in deferred maintenance, and since 2011, the agency has cut nearly one in five jobs from its operation staff, even though visitation rose and four new national parks have been authorized. At the U.S. Forest Service, which manages an additional 193 million acres, 45 percent of its permanent employees have left since 2021.

Farrell and Ring

Yet cause and effect are reversed for Farrell and Ring. These authors seem to think unwillingness is borne out of an American cultural decay. But money does address the trail problems of federal lands, and cutting out money cuts out willing workers.

This unwillingness is caused by making a career in trail maintenance too expensive. No valuable job should be too expensive to work in.

I moved from trails to wildland firefighting because it was the only way to make outdoor work semi-affordable. But you’ll read article after article detailing the exodus of firefighters from the Forest Service due to the exact same issue: Back-breaking work, too little pay.

A possible solution for staffing trail crews.

Pay more through quick pay increases, and train more. Stop charging so much for government housing.

Entry-level trail crew members should have access to a career ladder that emphasizes training that will help them be paid more. Sure, start them of as a GS-03, but find ways that will quickly get them up to GS-04 and 05, and find ways to include step increases as fast as possible.

Training in chainsaws, winching, water bars, etc. should all be ways for an employee to increase their pay.

This is obviously not easy for federal government agencies, whose career ladders are painstakingly made to slow upward movement. But the current way just doesn’t work anymore.

It’s also hard for government agencies to change the cost of housing, but I can guarantee that a reduction in rent prices will increase worker numbers. Government housing costs are a constant discussion among GS-03 to 05 employees, and determine whether they work at a location, live “homeless” out of their car, or give up the search for an affordable career.

Here’s another piece of the solution: Work hard on making a trail crew member a master of the craft, so that they will feel more responsibility to the agency and local work area as an expert.

Have trail crews constantly working with the public as information officers who inform interested volunteers and prospective employees on what it takes to construct and maintain trails. Let trails crews be integral to the larger outdoor community, rather than constantly isolating them and making them marginal in the public eye.

We don’t need general, underpaid laborers for outdoor recreation anymore. We need experts that have an ability to go deep into trail work, and stick around because they know there is much more to learn about land management.

We aren’t seeing a cultural decline for outdoor recreation, but the result of ballooning costs of living and the realization that we can’t be paid in sunsets anymore. We need American money to keep doing this work!