STANLEY, ID — Sawtooth National Recreation Area is a 756,000-acre natural gem that has friends in high places.
Michael Bolen, the USDA’s assistant secretary for natural resources and environment, is from here and oversees the Forest Service. Tom Schultz, the Forest Service commissioner who reports to him, is from Idaho and previously led the state’s Department of Lands. Two political appointees working for Mr. Bolen and Mr. Schultz also have ties to the region.
So if there was ever a place to escape the Trump administration’s moves to downsize the Forest Service, it should have been Sawtooth, residents say. But having lost more than half of SNRA’s staff in the first few months of the 2025 administration, the Forest Service appears to be as understaffed as anywhere. The Forest Service has said the agency’s major reorganization should make leadership more sensitive to local concerns, but some residents near the recreation area have expressed concerns that they fear nothing more will come of it. On-site employees.
Sawtooth Forest Service employees are “burnt out and exhausted,” said Leesa Dean, SRNA’s former conservation program director who lives in the area and is in contact with current employees.
At the Idaho Conservation League, which frequently collaborates with the Idaho Conservation League on forestry projects, Central Idaho Director Josh Johnson said he was surprised the Forest Service wasn’t doing more to re-staff the recreation area, given the neighborhood connections. It’s a popular spot, and even before the new administration took office, he had said there was a need to increase the number of employees.
“I don’t think that’s up for debate,” Johnson said. “Everyone will love it.”
But signs of the station’s decline locally are hard to miss. Tourists who stop by the Stanley Ranger Station will see two signs. One is a permanent sign outside that says “Visitors Welcome,” and the other is a note posted on the door stating that the office will be closed until further notice due to staffing changes.
In a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News, the Forest Service said it is “considering innovative ways” to provide affordable housing to employees that would allow the Stanley office to reopen. The Forest Service has signed a lease for a new housing development near Ketchum, home to the Sun Valley ski resort and an expensive real estate market, but the agency is still discussing specific terms with the developer, the Forest Service said.
top class area
SNRA covers a portion of the 2.1 million-acre Sawtooth National Forest. The area includes jagged 11,000-foot peaks that are still covered in snow in July, forests of lodgepole pine, and lush valleys dotted with ranches, including Bolens, a suburb of Stanley, population 117.
Boren’s ranch has become a source of local intrigue in recent years. Bolen had a disagreement with his neighbors over the use of the airstrip on his ranch, which had been approved by the Forest Service. Neighbors complained about the impact on scenic easements in the area. Bolen claimed he had done nothing wrong and sued for defamation in a recently dismissed lawsuit.
Unlike many national forests, SNRA is a mix of private and federal lands. Development is restricted by federal protections that cover the area, including scenic easements intended to preserve expansive views. Forest Service easements allow the public to access trails that cross private land.
“When we refer to Sawtooth National Recreation Area, we cannot help but use superlatives,” the Forest Service declares in its tourist guide.
Sawtooth National Recreation Area in southern Idaho is a natural gem, the Forest Service says, but its upkeep is increasingly falling on non-federal partners and volunteers. |Mark Heller/Politico
The closed ranger station, about 12 miles from Bolen’s ranch, already had limited time left before cuts by the Trump administration, said Ed Cannady, a retired Sawtooth River remote area manager and current director of the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Society. The SNRA headquarters, about an hour’s drive from the ranger station, remains open. But the ranger station’s closure is a publicly visible loss, Cannady said.
“This is a resource for the public and includes information about campsites, trails, and everything you need to know about Sawtooth Recreation Area,” Cannady said.
In the meantime, the Forest Service said it is directing visitors to the Stanley Museum and the Redfish Lake Visitor Center, two facilities operated by the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Society.
Personnel changes are also having an impact on this area.
Represented by SNRA Area Ranger Michael Fuller. Both the forest superintendent and deputy superintendent of the Boise National Forest, about 70 miles to the west, also serve as surrogates as the agency moves personnel to fill bureaucratic holes.
The staff changes were made after a proposal to expand mountain bike trails within the recreation area raised questions about the agency’s ability to maintain them. Two local property owners who proposed the idea say it could relieve pressure on other congested areas, but questions remain about the Forest Service’s ability to oversee or maintain them.
“We have a lot of great trails, but there’s a maintenance backlog,” says Rebecca Rush, a local resident who helped organize a survey to gauge public opinion on trail expansion. Most respondents didn’t like the idea, she said.
Agency reorganization
The Forest Service also promises to pay more attention to local concerns as a centerpiece of a slow agency-wide reorganization. Part of that plan includes eliminating the nine-person system of regional foresters and replacing them with 15 state commissioners, one of whom will be in the state of Idaho. These positions are open, but no hires have been announced.
Each state office will have about eight to 12 employees, Schultz told the House Forestry and Horticulture Subcommittee during a hearing Wednesday. This is equivalent to several hundred cases at a typical local office.
In all, fewer than 500 employees will have to relocate as a result of the reorganization, most of whom will work at the company’s Washington headquarters, Schulz said. The new headquarters will be located in Salt Lake City.
In most cases, employees will be able to remain at their current location, he said.
Alison Guinn, acting assistant superintendent for the Boise National Forest, said having the state headquarters in the capital city of Boise should help the region. It is an organization close to the Bureau of Land Management and addresses the long-held view of Forest Service officials that the old system took decision-making away from the field over time.
But officials have not promised to restore staffing levels and downplayed the potential costs of restructuring. Officials say as many as 6,500 people left the Forest Service nationwide last year, largely through voluntary retirements encouraged by the agency. Schultz said the Forest Service has about 30,000 employees, about the same number of employees it had during the first Trump administration.
Rebecca Rush and Josh Johnson of the Idaho Conservation League are concerned about the impact of Forest Service staffing cuts on Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area. |Mark Heller/Politico
Regarding Sawtooth, the Forest Service said, “We do not anticipate any new vacancies resulting from the reorganization and should not impact current operations across the forest.”
Like the rest of the country, the Forest Service says it can’t maintain all its trails without the help of volunteers and conservation groups, and that’s the reality regardless of changes from the Trump administration. In some locations in southern Idaho, Forest Service employees do field work for the Forest Service’s non-federal partners and are compensated by the organization, according to the Idaho Conservation League.
The Forest Service has scaled back environmental reviews and limited public comment periods in an effort to speed up work, but residents said the agency will continue to be on edge with less visible work to the public, such as conducting environmental reviews of forestry projects such as habitat restoration, logging and wildfire mitigation.
The Forest Service is having a hard time maintaining its existing structure and enforcing regulations because of unfilled positions, Dean said.
Dean said her husband recently visited Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Preserve, where the Forest Service has prohibited groups of more than 12 people from entering.
“He ran into a group of 35 people. There’s nothing to stop it,” Dean said.
When the Forest Service scales back maintenance, groups like the Sawtooth Association, a nonprofit group of SNRA supporters, step in to keep trails in shape.
Last year, the Sawtooth Society tripled its related work, the group said. This included removing 465 miles of trails and driveways, removing 1,300 trees and removing 130 illegal fire rings, the association said.
In April, the Sawtooth Association called on the public for further support, including an $80,000 donation to offset Forest Service cuts.
Failure to do so “puts our beloved natural places at risk of deterioration, destruction or complete closure this summer,” the association said.
Contact Mark Heller (helmarcman.49) on the encrypted messaging app Signal.
