{"id":16233,"date":"2025-10-06T22:03:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T04:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-mountains-association-halts-visitor-services-amid-government-shutdown\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:55:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:55:54","slug":"san-juan-mountains-association-halts-visitor-services-amid-government-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/san-juan-mountains-association-halts-visitor-services-amid-government-shutdown\/","title":{"rendered":"San Juan Mountains Association halts visitor services amid government shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A San Juan Mountain Association tent sits at the base of the Ice Lake trailhead. A forest ambassador monitors the trail and educates visitors on Leave No Trace. (Georgia Landeryou\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Six employees of the San Juan Mountains Association have been furloughed because of the federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are essentially temporarily laid off with no recourse for back pay,\u201d said Stephanie Weber, executive director of SJMA. \u201cI\u2019ve encouraged them to file for unemployment, but as long as the offices are closed, they do not get paid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal government shut down Oct. 1 after Congress failed to reach a budget deal by the mandated deadline. The lapse in funding has frozen all \u201cnonessential\u201d services, including many operations under the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.<\/p>\n

As a partner organization with the federal government, SJMA has been directly affected. The association operates retail stores and manages front-desk services at public land offices across the San Juan National Forest, which are now closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith those offices closed, our retail operations have shut down,\u201d Weber said. \u201cIt\u2019s never huge, but we\u2019re in the midst of hunting season, and we do get a lot of traffic for information on conditions, maps, guidebooks \u2013 things like that. So all of that came to a screeching halt across Southwest Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n

SJMA manages 13 retail locations in public land offices throughout the region. The closures have also forced the furlough of visitor information staff, who typically provide guidance and support to the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we\u2019re a contractor \u2013 or a partner to the federal government \u2013 my team does not get paid,\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n

She said a few other employees funded through federal agreements remain at work on non-federal projects \u2013 for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this extends, we\u2019ll have to cut their hours because they would be doing things that are specifically for the federal government, and we can\u2019t have them do that because the money is essentially frozen,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In solidarity with her furloughed staff, Weber said she plans to reduce her own pay, and other permanent employees have volunteered to cut back their hours if the shutdown continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got six staff who aren\u2019t working or earning an income,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re doing what we can to get through this together.\u201d<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

employees \u2018temporarily laid off with no recourse for back pay\u2019 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,199],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-san-juan-national-forest"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16233"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21174,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16233\/revisions\/21174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16233"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}