When trails snaking through Wyoming’s 9 million acres of national forests go unmaintained or unused, nature can begin to reclaim them with remarkable speed.  Look no further than sections of the Wyoming National Recreation Trail in the Bridger-Teton National Forest’s Big Piney District, whe re the path had become barely discernable under a mat of scrubby grasses.  “It’s just been overgrown for years,” said former U.S. Forest Service employee Monica Elliott. It was there that Wyoming’s newest trails crew, the Forest Corps — which Elliott manages — landed in July for a work hitch to assist the district recreation staff. After eight days of digging, clearing and delineating, voilá. The trail boasted the shiny new-dirt look of a just-constructed path.  It was among the 2026 projects undertaken by the Forest Corps. The nonprofit Friends of the Bridger-Teton created the Forest Corps in 2025 after seeing U.S. Forest Service district offices hollowed out by DOGE cuts and facing mounting maintenance backlogs.  The Corps was designed explicitly to help the agency on summer-season field projects in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, one of eight national forests within Wyoming’s borders. Friends of the Bridger-Teton hired former U.S. Forest Service staff, including Elliott, who had lost her job in the cuts, for the Corps.  In its inaugural season, the team communicated with each of the Bridger-Teton forest’s six districts to identify a high-impact project to assist on. The Corps painted picnic tables, installed a puncheon trail over marshy terrain and cleared trails in wildfire burn areas.  Once the demand for such an auxiliary crew became clear to the Friends nonprofit, which works to assist its namesake national forest in managing visitor impacts, the organization decided to make the initiative permanent.  Even with the Forest Service rehiring many of its seasonal recreation workers in 2026, Elliott said, “there is so much need” when it comes to maintaining the inventory of trails and infrastructure on the 3.4-million-acre Bridger-Teton National Forest.  This summer, the crew has worked six hitches lasting eight days and a couple lasting four. Along with projects like the Big Piney region trail, Elliott and the four-person team have cleared 700 downed trees from 80 miles of trail across the forest, including the Pack Creek Fire burn area. The season’s not over yet; the Forest Corps still has two hitches to go.  The post 80 trail miles, 700 downed trees: Wyoming Forest Corps brings muscle to maintenance backlog appeared first on WyoFile . ...read more read less