Job: Forestry Operations Technician

Job Description

Job Type: Seasonal, Hourly

Wage: $15-$18/hr. 

Location: Westcliffe, CO.

Job Description

This job includes all aspects of performing forestry operations on private lands. Forestry projects are designed and marked by our professional forestry staff, in conjunction with forest landowners, for fire mitigation, forest health, wood product harvests, aesthetics, and other land improvement/maintenance purposes. Our Forestry Field Technicians assist in the completion of these projects on-site between the months of April and November (approximately). Products produced from the harvested timber include firewood, lumber, poles, wood furniture, small sheds and cabins, and other wood assemblies. Slash is normally gathered and hauled to our slash disposal site at the sawmill property or other sites.

In all aspects, safety is “job one”, and Greenleaf has an active and very detailed safety program that all workers must follow. This job includes a mix of heavy manual labor, including the following tasks; running chainsaws to cut and trim trees and smaller brush species, hand piling and loading of wood, brush and limbs, machine (usually a rubber-tired front-end grapple loader) transporting, piling and loading of logs and limbs, and log/wood/limb hauling on trucks, lifting 50 to 75 pounds repetitively, as well as other various equipment operations and maintenance. Equipment includes chainsaw, hand tools, front-end loader, dozer, small pickups to ½ ton trucks, and trailers.

Equipment operators are responsible for learning and maintaining needed supplies, sharpening chainsaws, and maintaining their other assigned equipment on a regular basis, and for doing common maintenance and simple to medium complexity repairs to it. Larger and most complicated repairs, such as engine/transmission overhauls, are done in the mechanic’s shop by the company’s most experienced mechanic(s) or contracted out. The work may vary by season but will mostly consist of the tasks above, especially during the Summer. In the Spring, tree nursery work including transplanting and planting both by hand shovel /tools and machine may be required. During all seasons, there will be cross training and work in all company operations as is required to perform varied workflow.

Each employee is trained and checked out over time in simple to more complex operations and procedures, depending on demonstrated and/or documented skills and their particular interests and the company needs. All employees’ start with basic operations and with gradual advancement, and this may lead to inclusion of job and project management, crew supervision, and documentation paperwork. In some cases, customer relations and communications are involved and the employee must represent the company well. The employee is responsible as a crewmember for good teamwork, sharing workloads, and performing the operations in a quality and professional manner.

Compensation ($15-$18/hr or more) is relative to initial skills and experience, demonstrated skills over time, attendance, interest in the job, continuous learning and improvement, leadership, and contribution to overall production and quality, as well as overall crew improvement.

Work may vary by season, and includes the following and other tasks (as assigned):

a. Spring: Training in the various tasks associated with our forestry operations (see Summer/Fall below), and tree nursery operations which includes harvesting trees with a tree spade and hand tools from project sites, managing nursery trees at our sawmill site, and transplanting trees at project sites

b. Summer/Fall: On an as-needed basis, work may include felling, bucking, and limbing trees, brushing understory vegetation, piling slash, moving heavy materials, loading logs and slash piles with a tractor, transporting materials to and from work sites, and basic mechanic work on vehicles and equipment.

c. Winter: Opportunities for continued employment at our sawmill (see Wood Products Technician for more details)

In all seasons, outdoor work is the norm and each crew member is responsible for their own personal clothing, boots, water, food, and other gear to be comfortable on the job

**Disclaimer: The duties and responsibilities described above are not a comprehensive list and additional tasks may be assigned to the employee, time to time; the scope of the job may change as necessitated by business demands. Click “View Application” below for more detail on this specific job.