Stephanie Lindzey and daughter, Jenny Woolf, release endangered Wyoming toads on the family’s property in Albany County, Wyoming during a volunteer effort in 2018.Nicole Alt/USFWS
This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
On a private ranch in southeastern Wyoming in mid-June, mud squelched under our sterilized muck boots as we searched for one of North America’s most endangered amphibians. Adult Wyoming toads, raised in captivity by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, have been released here for years, and I had volunteered to help count how many had survived and reproduced. Along with several other volunteers, three Wyoming Game and Fish Department employees and a Fish and Wildlife Service seasonal technician, I slowly scanned the marshy banks.
About an hour into the search, I caught a little brown toad with a very grumpy face as it hopped from land to water. Wearing disposable blue gloves, I held the toad as the technician scanned for a pit tag; she found none, suggesting that the animal had been born or grew up outside captivity.
Since the 1970s, the Fish and Wildlife Service has worked with state biologists, the University of Wyoming, and legions of volunteers to help the Wyoming toad survive habitat destruction, drought, and the deadly chytrid fungus. As federal agencies struggle with budget cuts, hiring freezes, and draconian layoffs, the beleaguered toad needs even more help.
“I knew (Fish and Wildlife biologists) were short-handed, and I knew there were people who, if I asked in advance, could get out and help,” said Wendy Estes-Zumpf, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s herpetologist and current Wyoming toad recovery team leader.
As the federal land and wildlife agencies struggle to meet their responsibilities, volunteers and others are stepping up, not only to help endangered toads but also to maintain trail systems, host campgrounds, and even clean outhouses. Their assistance is crucial, but it’s not a permanent solution—and there are some jobs they just can’t do.
West of Albany Country, where the Wyoming toad clings to life, lies the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The third-largest national forest in the Lower 48, it’s known for its sheer granite rock faces, clear mountain streams, and grizzly bears, wolves, and elk.
Friends of the Bridger-Teton, which formed in 2019, organizes volunteers to clear trails and work as campground hosts and the “floating ambassadors” who educate visitors at trailheads and dispersed campsites. Scott Kosiba, the group’s executive director, said that even if the Forest Service hired more people, volunteers would still be needed.
So far this year, the Forest Service has lost about a quarter of its permanent staff on the Bridger-Teton, largely through deferred resignations and early retirements. The Pinedale Ranger District, one of the units within the Bridger-Teton, lost seven of its eight front-country rangers, leaving a single staffer to maintain trails, clear downed logs, and clean bathrooms.
In response, Friends of the Bridger-Teton boosted its volunteer programs and started a new program called Forest Corps, which hires experienced trail crews to work on the Bridger-Teton. Their first crew, which is all female, is made up of former Forest Service employees.
“Volunteers are valuable, but they’re no substitute for agency personnel.”
Some federal needs are even more urgent: In Utah County, Utah, county leaders voted to redirect $15,000 from a tourism tax fund toward pumping Forest Service outhouses ahead of the Fourth of July weekend. Nearly half of the outhouses in the popular Pleasant Grove Ranger District were full and closed because of budget cuts and red tape, Utah County Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner told local TV station KSL-TV. County communications manager Richard Piatt called the move an “emergency measure” and said the Forest Service is working to resolve the issue.
When the Flathead National Forest in Montana lost most of its seasonal maintenance crew to budget cuts, three local rafting outfitters created a rotating calendar to clean 10 pit toilets and pick up garbage at boat launches along the Flathead River, said Nathan Hafferman, general manager of Glacier Guides and Montana Raft. The companies pay their guides to clean the toilets—a job that can require a four-hour round-trip drive on rough dirt roads—and even buy toilet paper.
Hafferman doesn’t know if the arrangement is a permanent solution, but points out that some of the toilets and launches are used by hundreds of visitors every day. “The sentiment so far is that everyone knows it needs to happen,” he said. “If there’s no funding in the future, I believe everyone would like to figure out how to get it done. Having them not cleaned is not an option.”
When I signed up to survey for Wyoming toads, I also volunteered to spend a weekend feeding tadpoles, which are cheaper to produce in captivity and ensure a variety of ages in the free-roaming population, said Rachel Arrick, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. To protect the tadpoles from predators, agency biologists place them in pens set up in wetlands near a pond—a soft release of sorts—and feed them daily until they metamorphose into toads. In previous years, the Fish and Wildlife Service hired Student Conservation Association interns to care for the tadpoles; this year, they turned to volunteers.
Once I’d committed to a weekend in mid-July, I received an email with directions to the site and instructions on what to do if any tadpoles appeared to have died. The day before I was set to go, however, the project’s technician informed me that fluctuations in the wetland’s water levels and other issues had made the task of feeding more complicated, and that it would be carried out by staff instead of volunteers.
That’s the hitch with volunteers: There’s only so much we can do. Volunteers can’t issue permits, analyze projects, create plans for tackling invasive species or act as law enforcement.
“Volunteers are valuable, but they’re no substitute for agency personnel,” said Josh Hicks, director of conservation campaigns for The Wilderness Society. And all volunteer efforts still need oversight from knowledgeable staffers—people who know which trails need clearing or can explain how to safely remove graffiti from a rock face.
“They don’t have the staff in many areas to do the monitoring to get volunteers plugged in,” Hicks said. “It’s an absolute mess out there.”
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.