As wildfires reshape the California landscape, the private forestry sector is looking to underserved communities to fill a growing need for forest management labor, especially in the state’s remote regions.
The California Forestry Sector Jobs Initiative, launched by the California Forestry Association (Calforests) and CalFire nearly two years ago, will soon expand the current listing of roughly 95 jobs this cycle to 150 to 200 jobs in the private forestry sector, which employs about 55,000 Californians in total.
The jobs on offer span a wide range, from vocational positions like welders, electricians, truck drivers, tree planters and harvesters to licensed foresters, procurement managers, sales staff and GIS mappers.
Wildfire crisis
“As we march into the wildfire crisis that has engulfed all of our lives, it’s exceeded our capacity to only reach the portions of California where we are anchored, to meet our workforce needs,” said Calforests President and CEO Matt Dias at an American Community briefing.
Prior forestry experience is not required for most entry-level openings. Internal training and promotion pipelines — including higher education support at state schools including Cal Poly Humboldt, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UC Berkeley — are built into many positions, he said.
Employment timelines vary sharply by role, said Dias, who himself spent 15 years working in the woods as he began his career. While some entry-level positions at sawmills or in general labor could start immediately, roles with specialized skills or academic credentials may demand one to two years of study or training.
The sector has historically filled its workforce from communities near the forests themselves, predominantly in Northern and Central California.
’All hands on deck’
But the scale of the wildfire emergency has changed that balance: Roughly 13.4 million acres of California burned between 2014 and 2024, representing nearly 13% of the state’s land area, and Dias said the demand for forest management labor has grown accordingly.
“That’s truly an existential crisis,” he explained. “When I was a young man, wildfire was a Northern California issue, periodically occurring in Southern California.”
“In today’s world, it’s a statewide issue where air sheds are being choked out, water systems are being destroyed, water quality is being affected. It’s an all hands on deck scenario.”
Younger, more diverse recruits needed
This workforce gap is compounded by a labor pool that is “aging quickly,” Dias acknowledged, adding that as longtime workers retire, younger and more diverse recruits become a priority.
“We’ve had internal barriers to recruitment where we have not done a good job reaching out to portions of the state such as Southern California, because this sector is primarily in central Northern California,” he explained.
“We’ve not reached out well to underserved communities, but we are very invigorated by the notion that we can and bring folks into our world and offer them solid, paying, living-wage jobs within communities that are interested in accepting new levels of diversity across the board.”
Rural opportunities
While some current openings exist in urban centers like Los Angeles and San Diego, most are based in remote Northern California cities like Anderson in Shasta County, Oroville in Butte County, Lincoln in Placer County and Red Bluff in Tehama County.
“One of the premises that we’re working from is that there are people within their communities that desire to get out of the urban landscape and move into a more rural type of landscape,” Dias said. “And that’s the opportunity that we’re offering.”
For applicants with physical disabilities, office-based and administrative roles are ADA-compliant. The sector as a whole can accommodate a wide range of applicants, but field work and heavy equipment jobs do carry physical requirements.
Growing interest
Asked whether the severity of recent wildfires — including the January 2025 Palisades Fire — may discourage applicants, Dias pushed back.
“I do not think that events such as the Palisades Fire are actually preventing people from applying for these positions,” he said, pointing to rising enrollment in wildfire-related programs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo since 2013, when California wildfires began sharply increasing in length and acreage burned.
“The level of interest is increasing right now. I don’t think it’s discouraging. I think it’s invigorating.”
“We’re facing an environmental crisis in California, and there’s no way that the forest product sector — the private sector — can do it alone. There’s no way that the federal government can combat it alone. There’s no way that CalFire can fight it alone. It really takes a true partnership,” Dias said. “The opportunities exist.”
Available forestry jobs are listed here. More details are available at calforests.org.
