Natl Forest Grooming

as an employee of the forest service believe me your not alone when it comes to this kind of frustration. with the political push for fire suppression a lot of the funding is being pulled out of the other departments (ie recreation) and given to fire. with that the cat operator is probably a fire dozer operator and trying to go on vaction in the winter, the maintenance shop is probably backed up with 80 or so fire rigs that were abused all summer and need to be looked at before spring. the list just keeps going and going. the best thing that you can do is find a retired FS employee in your area that rides sleds and ask him to help out with all of the red tape tricks. hope this helps in understanding.

as far as the maintenance goes chances are he won't be able to touch it except for daily stuff, any other repair has to be approved, out sourced, etc, as far as tree cutting, its pretty easy to get qualified to cut under 24" trees, but to cut anything over that if you don't have a lot of trigger time on a saw its almost impossible to get qualified. One way around that is to have him ask one of the fire folks that is qualified to ride with him when he needs trees cut, we are always itchin to cut big trees. but as far making sure that the cat is ready to go it just depends on his budget and if they will let him do it during the summer. other than just try to see if any of the local clubs can help out in any way. any little bit helps