The chief operating officers of Colorado ski resorts say short staffing at the U.S. Forest Service is slowing down their ability to get work done.

In Colorado, nearly all ski resorts that are open to the public operate on federal lands with special use permits from the Forest Service. The resorts therefore, work closely with the federal agency on everything, especially to get new projects approved.

During the 2025 Ski Area COO Summit in Breckenridge on Friday, former Breckenridge COO John Buhler asked a panel of ski resort leaders about how they’ve been impacted by cuts to the Forest Service.

“It’s been pretty horrible honestly,” Copper Mountain COO Dustin Lyman said. “It’s a process that has always been lengthy and difficult to navigate. And now, with less people and the same amount of work, it’s just made it slower and more challenging.”

The Forest Service has struggled with understaffing for years, but in the first weeks of his presidency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the heads of federal agencies to shrink the size of the federal workforce to eliminate “waste” and “bloat.” 

The Department of Government Efficiency soon fired thousands of employees across the federal government, including an estimated 3,400 at the Forest Service. Hundreds more employees have left the federal government through the administration’s deferred resignation program, including top officials at the White River National Forest, where 11 ski resorts are located.

Lyman said that the short-staffing at the Forest Service has had “a pretty significant impact on our ability to move forward on lots of different things,” adding that the staff that remain at the White River National Forest are “doing an incredible job, in terms of navigating that.” 

“We’re working with them to increase efficiency and try to keep that flow going,” Lyman said.
“But there’s just high volume and less resources right now.”

Loveland Ski Area COO Rob Goodell said that ski resorts require a lot of approvals from the Forest Service to complete new projects. That often includes National Environmental Policy Act analyses, which evaluate the potential environmental and human impacts of a project before the Forest Service can sign off on it.

“I don’t know if a lot of people here realize the process that we have to go through when we’re doing a project … the studies and things that have to be in place ahead of time,” Goodell said. “The Forest Service used to do a lot of that work. You would cost-share with them, and their specialists would do it.”

With a shortage of staff at the Forest Service, ski areas have started hiring third-party specialists to prepare the reports and present them to the Forest Service for approval, Goodell said. The goal is “to take as much work off their desk as we can,” he said.

With the ongoing government shutdown stymieing Forest Service operations further, Goodell said, “We’re all waiting for our operation plans to be signed. Hopefully that will happen soon, but we’re still pushing on.”

Keystone Resort COO Shannan Buhler — John Buhler’s daughter — agreed that over the past six months, ski resorts have done more to support the Forest Service amid the short staffing at the agency. 

“The conversations have gone more from ‘Hey we need this and this and this,’ to ‘How are you doing?’ And, ‘What do you need from us as ski areas to help and support?'” Shannon Buhler said.

While ski areas can do their best to support the Forest Service, Shannon Buhler said that that only accomplishes so much.

“In a moment of hard times, it doesn’t mean it’s easier or that any of the work is getting done, but it sure feels better when you can at least lend a hand or offer any kind of support,” she said.

Arapahoe Basin Ski Area COO Alan Henceroth said “the last several months have just been brutal for our Forest Service employees locally.”

“If you know these folks, you’re friends with them, you know what they’ve been going through — the uncertainty, lots of people lost their jobs, lots of people took the early-out,” Henceroth said. “It has just been brutal on them.”

Henceroth said that ski resorts, and anyone else working with Forest Service needs to remember that the local staff are “a dedicated group of people that are just trying to do the best they can.”

“Think of the people,” he said. “I feel really badly for them because they are having a tough go.”