Suzanne Potter, Producer
Access to the beloved Pacific Crest Trail may soon be limited – due to a drop in federal grants and big layoffs proposed for federal public lands agencies.
This month, the Trump administration is expected to release the reduction-in-force targets for the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
Megan Wargo, chief executive officer of the Pacific Crest Trail Association, said federal grant money dried up last October, so they’ve had to cancel 56 weeks of crew maintenance work on the trails.
“If large sections of the trails are forced to be closed because of this lack of maintenance and care, that’s devastating that folks won’t be able to access their public lands because of these cuts,” she explained.
Volunteers help keep the trails clear of debris and repair erosion from storm damage. The Pacific Crest Trail runs more than 2,600 hundred miles from Mexico to Canada and includes landscapes from Anza Borrego in the South, to Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Lake Tahoe in the Sierras, and points north.
Wargo said the National Trails System Act calls for a public-private partnership to manage the national scenic trails. The Pacific Crest Trail Association normally gets between $667 million per year in federal funding – about a quarter of what it needs to help maintain the PCT.
“Typically, that breakdown is about 25% value that’s coming from the federal government, while the other 75% is coming through private donations and that volunteer service hour value,” she continued.
Wargo added that cuts to the federal workforce hobble agencies’ abilities to make grants and approve volunteer projects. And that means less brush gets cleared, raising the risk of wildfires in California.
References:
Pacific Crest Trail volunteer data Pacific Coast Trail Association 2025
