On Oct. 1, the day the government shut down after Congress failed to pass a budget, Jeremy Shaw was working deep in a meadow valley in Rocky Mountain National Park.
A research scientist at Colorado State University, Shaw was there with fellow members of the Kawuneeche Valley Restoration Collaborative, a group working to revive the riparian ecosystem where the Colorado River begins.
Decades of disturbance have degraded the valley. In the 20th century, hunters and trappers killed most beavers and predators like wolves. Elk and moose proliferated and gnawed down the willows that beavers need to build dams.
“Decades ago, the entire valley looked more like that,” Shaw said, pointing to an isolated stand of tall, red bushes, lining a swampy wetland. “Today, many parts of the Kawuneeche Valley look more like sort of a dry grassland.”
Restoring the lush wetlands, he said, would boost water quality, improve wildlife habitat and even slow the spread of severe wildfires. To achieve this, the Collaborative has begun a long-term effort to plant more willows, fence them from elk and moose and build human-made beaver-dam analogs to raise water levels.
On that early fall day, Shaw, a technical expert for the Collaborative, was patching up log structures at the group’s first restoration site. The project partners include local governments, a water district and National Park Service employees. But the federal workers couldn’t stay.
“Everyone was allowed to go into the office to check their email, to get the news that they were furloughed,” he said.
As the coalition plans its next major project for next year, Shaw worries the shutdown could have thrown off the multi-million-dollar restoration effort’s delicate timeline.
Shutdown hits scientists across federal agencies
During the longest shutdown in U.S. history, evaluations for federal research grants ground to a halt and thousands of federal scientists at agencies from NASA to the Environmental Protection Agency were sent home without pay. Many are still catching up after the 43-day pause, and some fear the ripple effects could last much longer.
Elaine Leslie, a retired chief of the National Park Service’s Biological Resources Division in Fort Collins, Colo., has lived through multiple shutdowns.
“It didn't matter if you were in the middle of a scientific study, or you're providing veterinary care or medicine or monitoring, like collaring wolves,” she said. “We had to stop everything.”
Some work can be delayed. But other tasks, such as controlling invasive plants, are seasonal, and can’t easily be postponed.
Kenny Evans, a fellow in science, technology, and innovation policy at Rice University, said the shutdown added another layer of disruption on top of layoffs, scrutiny of research that doesn’t align with the Trump Administration’s priorities and further proposed budget cuts.
“The shutdown basically just compounded uncertainty to what's already going on for the lives of researchers and people that rely on both work in the federal government and rely on the federal government to do their science,” he said, noting that the resolution to continue funding the government only lasts through January.
Carl Houtman was finalizing a new package-recycling standard when he was furloughed. He’s a chemical engineer at the Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory in Wisconsin. As a National Federation of Federal Employees union representative for Forest Service researchers nationwide, he hears concerns across the agency.
“It really does have a negative impact on our scientists and our researchers here and their careers,” he said. “It begins to make collaborators think, ‘Well, can I really trust the researchers to meet their obligations when we have a shutdown?’”
The uncertainty is especially hard on early-career scientists, he said, and could make it more difficult to recruit new researchers.
In an emailed statement, the U.S. Forest Service said that essential services, timber sales, recreation and wildfire response continued during the shutdown.
“With full operations restored, our employees are returning to work across the country to reopen offices, process permits, and to greet visitors at our trailheads,” the statement said. The National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment.
A reminder of what’s at stake
Back in Rocky Mountain National Park, Shaw kept thinking about his federal collaborators.
“Without these people, Rocky Mountain National Park wouldn't be the same,” he said.
In their absence, he couldn’t access certain groundwater and vegetation data.
“That's the kind of information that we depend on to understand, ‘Hey, is this working?’ or ‘Do we need to make changes?’”
More critically, the shutdown delayed important steps in the Collaborative’s preparations for its second stream restoration site. The work, mostly done in the off-season, involves finalizing designs to hand off to contractors, securing federal water permits and historic preservation signoffs and getting approvals from park leadership.
Shaw is uncertain about the total impacts to the timeline, but missing key windows could delay construction by a year, as the stream restoration work can only happen in the fall, when water levels are low.
“It's been a little stressful to know that the tremendous amount of work over the preceding years is being held up and jeopardized,” he said.
But in another valley of the park, where an earlier restoration project has protected growing red willows, Shaw brightened when he spotted a beaver dam tucked behind a tangle of shrubs.
For him, it’s a reminder of the ultimate goal.
“When the beavers have decided that we've done a good enough job setting this the stage for them that they can come in and take over and start doing things like this on their own,” he said.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
