"The Forest Service remains stretched on the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho — a place with ties to key agency leaders — and is leaning on volunteer groups for help."
"STANLEY, Idaho — The Sawtooth National Recreation Area is a 756,000-acre natural gem with friends in high places.
The Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment, Michael Boren, is from here and oversees the Forest Service. The forest agency chief reporting to him, Tom Schultz, is from Idaho and once led the state’s Department of Lands. Two political appointees working for Boren and Schultz have ties to the area as well.
So if any place might have been spared the Trump administration’s moves to shrink the Forest Service, residents say, the Sawtooth should have been it — yet the agency appears as short-staffed as anywhere after losing more than half of the SNRA’s employees in the opening months of the administration in 2025. The Forest Service has said a larger reorganization at the agency should make leadership more attuned to local concerns, although some residents near the recreation area have raised concerns that won’t result in more on-the-ground employees.
Forest Service employees on the Sawtooth are “burned out and exhausted,” said Liesa Dean, a retired wilderness program director on the SRNA who lives in the region and remains in touch with current employees."
Marc Heller reports for E&E News July 24, 2026.
