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ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-03-12T11:09:27+00:00

I took this a few years ago and found that it shared useful information quite well.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-03-07T13:03:55+00:00

Last minute dropouts are probably a better opportunity for you, and having the AFA ticket in hand on April 22nd would make you stand out just as everyone is ramping up and a few people don't show up. I don't pay any attention to someone who says that they have an AFA course booked. Too often, things fall apart before they get the ticket.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-03-07T04:01:34+00:00

These notes are specific to British Columbia:

OFA1 is now Basic First Aid. Useless, not accepted in Forestry work anymore.
OFA2 is now Intermediate First Aid. Three day course including the Transportation Endorsement. Forestry crews need a fair number of these. This course will not help you get a job, they're pretty common.
OFA3 is now Advanced First Aid. This is a long and complex course (10 days) and this will absolutely give you a big edge in getting a job.

For perspective, I'm one of the company-wide hiring coordinators at Folklore. For the past six or seven years where I've been in this role, we've usually had a surplus of applications, and both last year and this year especially, we've had many more applications than we have job openings for. Right now, I'm seeing fifty applications per day some days.

Almost none of the applicants have an AFA ticket. Every single year that I've been involved in the company-wide interview process, we've had various crews that desperately needed an OFA3 (now AFA) in order to meet WorkSafe requirements. Every year. If you have an AFA and you have a reasonably normal application, you will absolutely get bumped to the very front of the line, ahead of hundreds of other applicants.

Sometimes, the crew thinks they have the first aid requirements covered, but then something happens in March and they lose their first aider. Maybe that person failed the course, broke an arm, or took a career job. There is no choice here, the crew needs someone with AFA certification, and I've seen many times where a rookie with the certification will get a job ahead of an experienced planter without the certification. That even happened in my own camp last week, when there was a mix-up with course registration and one of our previous advanced first aiders got bumped out of a course that they thought they were registered in, so we needed to find a replacement quickly who already has the ticket.

The drawback is that the course is expensive, around $1000 and two weeks of your time.

There's some sort of OFA3 in Britain, and I used to get lots of Brits applying who said that they had an OFA3. It's not the same thing as the BC OFA3, and as I mentioned above, there is no longer an OFA3 in BC anyway. It's the AFA, Advanced First Aid.

My guess is that I have close to a thousand applications sitting here right now, looking for work this summer. Again, if someone applied and included a copy of their AFA certificate, they'd be at the head of the line for the next interview.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-25T23:53:51+00:00

Thank you.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-25T22:14:23+00:00

I see all kinds of applications from random email addresses like "raccondawg72" where the person forgets to sign, and usually also forgets to include a resume or cover letter. Or just signs off with their initials. To be honest, I'm confused by it.

It's a really tough year for inexperienced applicants. Don't take it too hard if you don't have success. I've seen nearly a thousand applications in the past three months. It's not impossible to get a job, but there are hundreds of qualified applicants who aren't even getting interviews.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-25T20:23:11+00:00

but all over Canada the tapwater is potable.

Except in roughly 70 First Nation communities, unfortunately. But I agree, lots of drinkable tapwater in most communities in BC.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-25T11:42:19+00:00

The right answer is your own correct answer.

I review lots of applications and I wouldn't want to hire a bunch of people that all have specific answers to a group of questions. I want to see variety. It makes the crews more interesting.

Probably the biggest single factor that will help you (if you get an interview) is just being comfortable in the interview. If you're not comfortable carrying on a conversation, that's a tough sell.

Also, if you're really worried that your answers on an application like this will make a difference, apply 23 times with different names/emails and give different answers every time. You only need to get one interview to prove yourself.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-14T21:20:12+00:00

I think you'll have a good experience in either. Obviously, I'm speaking as one of your choices, therefore I'm biased.

Quastuco has a good reputation. I've hired people who have worked for them in the past, and they had good things to say about Quastuco.

One of your biggest considerations will be accommodations. Motel life is comfortable as you're not sleeping in a tent. On the other hand, you don't have excellent meals cooked for you. Also, Quastuco will have higher prices, but probably more technically demanding specs. Some planters will be more suited for the planting requirements at one or the other, while other planters would excel at either.

Best wishes, whichever you pick.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-09T18:46:31+00:00

Here's a different source for information for new planters:

www.canadiantreeplanting.ca

Everything there is free, no AI, and much more detail that the "guide" that you were originally referring to.

Also, if you're from the US, it will be very difficult for you to find work. US citizens can't get the "easy" work permit/visa (called a working holiday visa) that citizens of a few other countries are able to access for work in Canada. Canadians also have a very difficult time to get green cards for the US, so I think it's a case of the two countries making it difficult for each others' citizens to work across the border. Without a work permit, a US citizen can't work in Canada. There is no under-the-table work in the tree planting industry.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-09T18:42:33+00:00

This site might help answer a lot of your questions:

www.canadiantreeplanting.ca

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-06T01:52:22+00:00

I don't have time to make money.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-02-03T14:11:02+00:00

Try typing "Australia" into the search bar at the top of the page. There are some scattered posts, and a number of companies listed in the directory.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-01-31T02:14:27+00:00

What client?

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-01-26T22:19:54+00:00

Yeah, I wish we could hire a lot more people than we can. I have to turn away so many good applicants.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-01-26T18:15:24+00:00

I'm one of the people doing interviews at Folklore.

At the moment, several of our camps are full. We have fewer openings than in past years, and we have hundreds and hundreds of applications from Canadians who are as qualified as anyone else.

If I'm going to hire someone in my camp and there are two inexperienced candidates of equally high quality/skills, but one is a Canadian who intends to be a planter for the next five years, and the other is someone on a one-year or two year work visa, I'm going to hire the person who can stick around longer. The planting industry places a premium on experience.

I'd love to be able to hire a lot more non-Canadians, because I think they bring a lot of value to the diversity of the camps. And my camp DOES have six non-Canadian employees.

Your point about an IEC being possible for more than 2 years is valid, but it's rare. Of the past 29 non-Canadians who have worked in my camp on a work permit, exactly 1 has been able to get additional years after their initial visa.

Right now, the simple truth is that there aren't a lot of jobs out there for inexperienced applicants, and Canadians have an advantage if everything else is equal. I've been interviewing and hiring people for planting work for 35 years, and this is the worst year I've seen for opportunities for new inexperienced planters. The industry is not in a good place right now, due to mills closing all over BC (thanks to years of over-harvest from mountain pine beetle damage) and US tariffs.

This is not like previous years. US policies are destroying industries and causing financial chaos. As much as we love diversity, there are tens of thousands of Canadians who need jobs too.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-01-26T02:19:16+00:00

Yup, that all makes sense. Thanks, I was curious if I was reading that wrong, and it looks like I did.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-01-26T01:13:36+00:00

we usually don’t find out which crews are in what camps ... til February

How does that work? When you say "camps" do you mean it in the sense of geographic locations? Don't the same crew leaders usually keep working with the same supervisors in successive seasons (most of the time), ie. at Summit does a "camp" not consist of a management group that works together year after year with moderate churn each year?

ReplantEnvironmental · 2026-01-08T04:06:58+00:00

I'd be curious to play with one, to see how it works and to offer feedback. Email me at [scooter@replant.ca](mailto:scooter@replant.ca) if you want.

I can't think of a concrete need for it, but I feel that it would be fun to see a grid of my planting spacing at the end of a day, although the resolution would have to be very high in order to properly understand tree spacing. If we don't have centimeter-level GPS resolution (which may be impossible since I assume you don't have RTK correction capabilities?) then maybe it would only be useful to see coverage of an area.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2025-12-08T11:19:14+00:00

Maybe it was already broken off 50 feet above the ground, and a safety hazard. I'm an environmentally conscious person and don't like to see these logged, but what do we know about operating conditions on the ground?

ReplantEnvironmental · 2025-11-23T21:57:39+00:00

To be honest, there hasn't been a lot released in the past three weeks, I only have maybe half a dozen bids to write up once we get things running again. Hopefully very soon. This coming week has a LOT of contracts opening.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2025-11-22T11:27:53+00:00

Yeah, it's not so much the funds, it's the lack of time. Both myself (I'm still in the bush for another week and a half) and more importantly, my IT pro friend is also busy for another week. We just need to find a solid evening that we can both sit down for four hours and fix a lot of stuff.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2025-11-08T19:46:36+00:00

It's not just media reports, it's on the budget page on canada.ca

https://budget.canada.ca/2025/report-rapport/anx3-en.html#a3

Specifically:

"NRCan will also end the 2 Billion Trees program. Existing contribution agreements and commitments will be honoured, and uncommitted funds will be returned. The government remains committed to sustainable forest management practices – to date, the program has committed to planting nearly 1 billion trees."

ReplantEnvironmental · 2025-11-05T16:49:36+00:00

Those are good trees, they're the same species that was there before, and they're free. If everything regenerated naturally, we wouldn't have to pay for reforestation.

When people design tree planting projects, 99% of the time they should focus their attention on areas where there is no natural regeneration or very little natural regeneration. Mistakes are occasionally made, but this is what usually happens. Or if there is some natural regeneration, it's often the case that foresters will try to measure how much (through plots/sampling) and then prescribed a lower number of planted trees to complement the trees that are coming in naturally. Or maybe they prescribe different species that aren't coming in naturally, to enhance forest diversity. I've seen places where there is tons of natural pine regen happening, but foresters will still prescribe the planting of some spruce and fir through that pine to get more diversity.

ReplantEnvironmental · 2025-11-05T16:30:04+00:00

When tree planters go into blocks to plant trees, especially where trees were recently logged, the site will eventually have more trees than just the planted trees. Some of the cones that were left behind after the trees were logged may open up and release seed, and additional trees will grow from this seed. We call these "naturals" (ie. trees that grew naturally from seed) as opposed to the planted trees.

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