As California’s wildlife crisis deepens amid forester job shortages, the state has launched a new initiative to build up its forestry ranks.
California has 33 million acres of forest land; for the 4 million of these that are highly managed, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) has launched the California Forestry Sector Jobs Initiative to recruit workers, particularly from underrepresented communities, to fill about 1,000 forestry jobs.
These jobs, ranging across vocational and educational levels, include logging, manufacturing, engineering, bioenergy production, forest management, mapping, park guiding, environmental analysis, biology, accounting, HR, electrical work and distribution driving.
Open jobs, with pay and location, are available here; the positions are largely near Northern California cities and towns like Eureka, Chico, Ukiah, Redding, Anderson, Quincy and Red Bluff.
Forestry in California
For the past three decades, California’s forestry workforce has been aging and declining while reliant on previously successful strategies of “feeding its needs from within” by recruiting from rural Northern California, said Matt Dias, president and CEO of the California Forestry Association (Calforests). “But now our needs have gone well beyond our workforce, especially with climate challenges.”
Calforests, representing the state’s private forestry business sector, received a CAL FIRE grant to carry out the jobs initiative.
Dias, a forester for 25 years, grew up in Sacramento where he lives now, and learned about forestry “by happenstance in college because, like many Californians, I didn’t even know it existed here,” he explained.
“When I was coming into this industry, the gender and cultural diversity was low. We’ve seen shifts over the last 15 years, primarily toward gender equality, but culturally, there’s still a vacancy,” he added. “Forests are not static in nature. They’re constantly growing, dynamic systems … We’re now moving away from relying upon that happenstance by piquing folks’ early interest in working together to maintain these systems.”
“Traditionally, a lot of forestry jobs in rural communities, and even the equipment, have been handed down from mothers and fathers to daughters and sons, so we haven’t had a huge amount of opportunity for more folks to come in,” said Chief Matthew Reischman, deputy director of resource management at CAL FIRE.
“But now, we have a forest management issue. We can do a better job utilizing our natural resources and commercializing timber while creating wildfire resiliency across the state,” he continued. “Based on the fire activity we’ve seen over the last five to 10 years, we have a huge amount of acres that need to be reforested, and we truly need all the help we can get.”
In 2024 alone, 7,668 wildfires have burned 1,040,146 acres statewide as of November 15; the most recent five-year average is 1,284,570 acres burned annually.
California has “very, very protective forest practice laws that require us to be growing more trees than we would ever cut,” said Reischman. “But there’s often a misconception that if it’s green, it’s healthy … If you consider the average fire-return interval in the Sierra Nevada, for instance, it’s every seven to 12 years for an acre. And while some stands haven’t seen fire in 50 or 60 years, brush keeps growing in to make them weaker and more susceptible.”
“Every five to 10 years, stands will regrow, but if we don’t maintain them, we’ll continue to see large and catastrophic fires,” he added. “As a fire department, we have to make fast decisions; often, people’s lives and property depend on it. But if we have an opportunity to pause and diversify the way we work together, as through this initiative, we’re ultimately more informed to make better decisions.”
Foresters’ stories
“As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I originally wanted to be a wildlife biologist, but my first year in 2010 I was drawn to forestry because how much you have to know to care for an entire forest — like hydrology, soil science, botany and wildlife ecology,” said Brita Goldstein, licensed forester and community affairs representative at timber manufacturer Green Diamond Resource Company, which manages about 400,000 acres of redwood on the North Coast.
There are about 1,500 registered professional foresters (RPFs) in California, according to the California Licensed Foresters Association.
“I then studied in a forestry program at Berkeley composed 80% of women, which is highly unusual,” she continued. “After graduating in 2014, I learned my craft by consulting with small family forest owners to manage their lands,” she continued. “After earning my RPF license in 2018, I now work in the private sector promoting forestry education.”
Amid intensifying climate change and wildfire risk, Goldstein said she sees increasing demand for forestry jobs since she started a decade ago — and with that demand, increasing wages: “I was very excited to have my first job at $13 an hour. Now, my company will pay someone in a similar entry position starting more in the range of $20 to $22 an hour.”
“Forestry is so valuable because we work on such a long-term time scale, sometimes a century — I won’t get to see all the trees that I plant reach their full height, but I do it anyway, and I think that drive to make our forests resilient for the future is what builds the integrity of this field,” she continued. “That said, our work does reward us with incredibly tangible results and purpose, like treating fuels to prevent wildfires, or harvesting trees and selling logs to support a family.”
“There’s not only a broad array of what you need to know in forestry, but a broad array of what you can do with it,” said J. Lopez, public member of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection and executive director of the California Wildfire Mitigation Program, run through the state governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
Over 40 working years, “I started in forest management and nursery work in Southern California, in the rainforests of southern Mexico and in the high elevations of Northern Mexico … then went into the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Forestry Division, and into work with the state,” he continued.
“The beauty of forestry is in keeping our resources renewable — how, in properly maintaining the wood, we can properly harvest and make it into something used by everybody, like a pencil, your house, even toothpaste and space satellites,” Lopez explained. “The knowledge you have in how to renew a disrupted ecosystem means you can make the difference in how an area is maintained and used.”
“What we do, we’re not going to see it fully. What we do is always going to be for somebody else. Having that impact in the future of this world through forestry is the most rewarding part,” he added. “This work means understanding the legacy that we can leave behind.”
