Lomakatsi layers training and employment opportunities for people of all ages
From riparian restoration projects to collaborative, landscape-scale forest restoration initiatives, Lomakatsi provides a wide range of opportunities for environmental education and on-the-ground training in ecological restoration. Offerings include outdoor classroom service learning for grade-school students, nationally recognized summer restoration training programs for high school students, and workforce development opportunities in ecological restoration and prescribed fire.
Providing youth with hands-on experience in ecosystem restoration and inspiring careers in natural resources
Lomakatsi’s Youth Ecological Stewardship Training and Employment Program provides youth with educational experiences in ecosystem restoration through hands-on workforce training and employment designed to inspire interest in natural resources career paths.
Lomakatsi operates youth workforce initiatives throughout the region, layered into landscape-scale ecological restoration projects with partners, including the U.S. Forest Service—engaging students in both the science and application of ecosystem restoration and natural resource stewardship. Through positive work experience and teamwork development, youth gain education, professional skills, a sense of responsibility, a long-term community service ethic, and a foundation toward future employment in the field of natural resource stewardship. This unique program has been recognized as a best practice model by the National Congress of American Indians, U.S. Department of Interior, and U.S. Department of Agriculture for its successes tackling socioeconomic and environmental challenges.
Building a Future
Fused into active forest and watershed restoration projects, Lomakatsi’s Youth Ecological Stewardship Training and Employment Program provides youth interns with paid vocational training. Upon completion, participants are empowered to obtain further productive sustainable employment with Lomakatsi or other contractors and are inspired to pursue careers in natural resource management.
Restoration Ecology Education
Promoting long-term, community-based stewardship by engaging students, volunteers, and youth in all aspects of the ecological restoration process, from planning and implementation to maintenance and monitoring
Program Components
Active engagement in ongoing ecological restoration through place-based service learning establishes a lasting dedication to the natural world.
In-class presentations feature interactive activities and guest speakers and increase student awareness in the classroom while supporting field work. Subjects taught include botany, wildlife biology, fisheries, soil science, forest and fire ecology, hydrology, water quality, ecocultural knowledge, and technical forestry skills.
Site adoption allows participants to take part in the restoration process from start to finish. Participants are engaged in the science behind restoration ecology by taking part in restoration project planning and monitoring.
Hands-on aquatic restoration covers projects along local creeks, stream ecology, watershed function, and the importance of healthy riparian areas.
Hands-on forest restoration in diverse habitats and plant communities allows participants to explore a wide range of on-the-ground activities and strategies aimed at protecting older forests, reducing the risk of extreme wildfire, diminishing the spread of invasive species, and improving the health of native ecosystems.
From Forest to Fish, A Holistic Approach
Working collaboratively with a wide range of partners, hands-on education and service-learning activities are incorporated into Lomakatsi’s active forest and watershed restoration projects. Students work under the guidance of professional Lomakatsi restoration practitioners and engage with natural resource agency specialists. Through long-term adoption, sites from upland forested slopes to fish-bearing streams along the valley bottom give students the opportunity to interact with a wide range of local ecosystems. Complementary in-classroom presentations and activities provide students with a deeper look into the study of ecosystems and actions being taken to restore them.
Ecological restoration: The process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.
Ecological Workforce Training
Training workers in ecological forestry, fire ecology, soils, wildlife habitat, plant associations, and watershed function since 1995
Since 1995, Lomakatsi has created jobs, developed the workforce, and furthered contractor capacity for the ecological restoration and stewardship forestry industry throughout southern Oregon and northern California, supported by a skilled local workforce and team of project management professionals.
The Lomakatsi crew is a “best value,” ecologically conscious workforce. Lomakatsi’s leading saw crews comprise a specialized technical thinning team that is accustomed to carrying out detailed ecological prescriptions. Crew managers are knowledgeable in the diversity and complexity of local fire-adapted ecosystems. Crews are regularly trained in fire ecology, soils, wildlife habitat, plant associations, and watershed function and health, along with all the necessary skills to perform on-the-ground work. Lomakatsi provides its crew members with frequent educational opportunities by organizing workshops and training programs for expanding and upgrading their skills. All of our staff, crew management team, and crew members are certified and current with state and federal certifications to implement prescribed fire applications.
Lomakatsi consistently employs an in-house restoration crew of more than 20 members from southern Oregon and northern California. The Lomakatsi workforce is multicultural, and although our crew members come from a diversity of backgrounds, they join together to form a very specific and unique restoration worker culture. Lomakatsi crew members are family people.
In addition to our own crews, we employ forestry contractors and timber operators from the communities where we implement restoration projects. The other contractors we hire comprise an additional workforce of up to 100 crew members during different periods of the year. During our busy season, Lomakatsi is responsible for providing employment for up to 150 personnel performing forest and watershed restoration work.
Lomakatsi Workforce Philosophy
Lomakatsi was founded by forest workers. Lomakatsi has been built from the ground up by the hands of workers.
The ecological restoration workforce is the backbone and foundation of Lomakatsi. The task of implementing forest and watershed restoration is a daunting one, and it requires strong hands that directly work to heal the land. 
Restoration workers use their bodies and minds to plant trees along streams and clearcuts, pull invasive weeds, thin dense, fire-suppressed forests, stabilize slopes, seed native grasses back to the woodlands, stack the sticks to reduce fire hazards, and carry the drip torches across the steep slopes in an effort to carefully reintroduce fire back to these landscapes.
Empowering the Green Collar Workforce and honoring the vital role these individuals play in the restoration process is highly regarded within the Lomakatsi social philosophy.
The treatment of the workers is reflected in the treatment of the land. The two are inseparable. As one of our principles states, “Remember the Workers: Happy respected people do the best work.”
Lomakatsi has worked to raise the bar for forest workers by creating social principles and adopting polices within our organization that foster the empowerment and respectful treatment of restoration workers. We work to spread this model in hopes of influencing contractors and outfits performing restoration work and service forestry to adopt policies where workers are respected.
Restoration work is labor intensive, often dangerous, and out of public view due to the remote nature of project locations. Lomakatsi’s founders and managers understand the difficulty and nature of this work from their own experiences. Often, project planners are the ones who receive the praise while the workers are marginalized. Yet restoration workers are the landscape artists who, with their hands, are transforming these forests and watersheds toward resiliency and health — one tree at a time, one acre at a time.
Community Outreach & Education
Building stewardship into the communities we serve by providing engaging, educational opportunities in the field of ecological restoration
Ecological restoration is a rapidly evolving field of work. One of Lomakatsi’s founding principles is to provide educational opportunities for the communities we serve with the goal of building and strengthening the field.
By orchestrating forums, presentations, workshops, field tours, conferences, and media interviews, managing an educational website, participating in community events, and developing educational outreach materials, the Community Outreach and Education Program provides participants of all ages with opportunities to learn about and gain hands-on experience with restoration ecology.
“The same way we work to restore the whole ecosystem from the ridge tops to the valley bottoms, we work to organize the whole community in an effort to rebuild healthy ecosystems and sustainable communities.”
– Marko Bey, Lomakatsi Founder & Executive Director
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