The forest service workforce in the Pacific Northwest is largely immigrant, low-literate, and Spanish-speaking with unique vulnerabilities due to a lack of skills and safety training, occupational immobility, remote work locations, and small contractor employment.
With this 5-year award to Oregon State Forestry Extension, PNASH joins as a partner in Hands on the Land, a collaborative program to enhance the equity of the forest workforce in the Pacific Northwest. We focus on labor-intensive forest workers including forestry services contract crews, incarcerated workers, and volunteer workforces.
Hands on the Land re-envisions our forest workforce with:
The Northwest’s long-standing occupational health and safety programs, based at the University of Washington, propose a capacity building project for safety and health training of restoration forestry services workers, serving Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The Northwestern US faces catastrophic wildfire risks and a rapidly emerging need for forest fuels reduction work. This work relies heavily on manual labor conducted by small private contract forest service firms, small forest landowners, young workers, and Spanish-speaking immigrant workers.
