At Women’s Forest Congress, we know that veterans play an important and meaningful role in America’s forest community. It is a connection that doesn’t get highlighted or celebrated as often as it deserves. This Memorial Day, we find ourselves wondering about that path; what draws someone from one form of service into another, and what they carry with them when they make that transition. As America prepares to mark 250 years of its history, we want to explore what we know about the relationship between military service and forest stewardship, and to honor the people who have lived both.

Veterans Have Always Been Part of Our Forest Story

The ties between military service and America’s forests run long and deep. Theodore Roosevelt is well-remembered as a soldier, conservationist, and the president who did more than any other to establish America’s public lands system. He drew an explicit line between his sense of duty to country and his sense of duty to the land. Take for example his quote: “Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.”

The Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the most consequential environmental programs in American history, was modeled on military organization and enrolled millions of Americans between 1933 and 1942 in the work of reforesting, restoring, and building the trail and infrastructure systems that define our public lands today.

That tradition continues in meaningful ways. Veterans make up around 12% of the U.S. Forest Service workforce. The skills that define military service, including the ability to lead in difficult terrain, physical resilience, comfort with complex logistics, and a mission orientation that keeps the bigger picture in view, can translate naturally and powerfully into forest and natural resources work. The Forest Resources Association makes this case directly on its Veterans in Forestry Work page, connecting transitioning veterans and reservists with employers in logging, log trucking, and forest industry careers that need exactly the kind of capable, committed people the military produces.

For veterans exploring a path into federal natural resources work, the entry points are real and growing:

These programs reflect a growing recognition that the values veterans bring to their jobs are well aligned with forestry: a purpose-driven, team-centric environment dedicated to the public good.

The Private Sector Is Stepping Up Too

Recognition of veterans in the forest community is not limited to public agencies and workforce programs. Some of the country’s leading forestry and forest products companies have formalized their commitment to veteran employees through dedicated employee resource groups. Weyerhaeuser’s Veterans of Weyerhaeuser is an employee resource group (ERG) that focuses on building networks, promoting awareness, and supporting career development for veteran employees. PotlatchDeltic, now merged with Rayonier, launched Salute in 2023, a Veterans ERG whose purpose is to recognize and support employee veterans and military families, drawing on the skills of veteran team members whose military experience in teamwork, discipline, leadership, and adaptability directly supports the company’s values and operations. The company’s Gwinn sawmill facility in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula adds a striking physical dimension to this story: the mill operates on the site of the former K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, a piece of land that transitioned from military service to forest products after the base closed in 1995, providing a tangible reminder that the connection between military service and forest work is sometimes written into the landscape itself. 

The Women Veterans We Don’t Often See

More than 2.1 million women veterans live in the United States today. In 2000, women veterans made up just 4% of the veteran population; by 2040, they are projected to reach 18%, making them the fastest-growing segment of the veteran community. Today, women represent nearly 18% of active-duty military personnel. 

Yet, when we went looking for information specifically about women veterans in forestry, we came up largely empty. The data is not well tracked, the profiles are not widely published, and the stories are not being told in any organized or sustained way within the forestry and conservation community. For a field that is working hard to recognize and advance women’s contributions, this is a gap we need to close.

We did find one example worth celebrating. The National Park Service shares a Women Veterans in the National Park Service page that features individual profiles of women who served in the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps before going on to careers in the NPS as contracting officers, law enforcement rangers, interpreters, and resource managers. Their stories are compelling precisely because they are specific: you can see how military service shaped the professional who arrived to protect and serve these public landscapes, and you can see what was gained when those women found their way into this work.

These women exist in forestry too, in the Forest Service, in state forestry agencies, in private timber and conservation organizations, in consulting practices, nonprofit land trusts, and more. We simply have not yet done the work of finding them, honoring them, and holding up their stories as part of our field’s history and future.

Two Kinds of Service, An Aligned Purpose

We believe there is something that connects a person who volunteered to serve their country and a person who devotes a career to the forests that sustain it. It goes beyond the practical overlap of skills, though it is encouraging to see veteran services increasingly recognizing that overlap through workforce training and job placement programs. At its core, it is something more fundamental: a sense that some things are worth protecting not because of what they return to you, but because of what they mean.

WFC believes the forest community is stronger when it sees and supports all the people within it. Women veterans in forestry and conservation represent an important and underserved part of that community — professionals with exceptional capability, hard-won experience, and a record of service that deserves full recognition, both in the communities they came from and in the professional field they have entered. As women continue to increase their presence in military service and in forestry roles across the sector, the intersection of those two trajectories represents a growing community of women whose stories belong in our field’s history and future.

WFC is committed to helping make those stories visible. Elevating the voices and contributions of women across the full breadth of the forest community is central to our mission, and we see bringing women veterans in forestry into that work as both a natural extension of that mission and an important next step for our field. These women have carried exceptional service from one calling into another, and the forest community is richer for it.

On this Memorial Day, we honor and thank all those who have served in uniform and in dedication to the forests that sustain us all.

 

Note on sources:

Statistics on women veterans cited in this post are drawn from the following sources:

  • U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Women Veterans Population projections, as reported by the American Legion, “Some Interesting Facts About Women in the Military,” March 2025. Available at legion.org.
  • U.S. Department of Defense, 2024 Demographics Report: Profile of the Military Community. Available at defense.gov.
  • Pew Research Center, “The Changing Face of America’s Veteran Population,” November 8, 2023. Available at pewresearch.org.
  • Women Veterans Alliance, “Women Veterans by the Numbers: Surprising Facts and Powerful Stats,” 2024. Available at womenveteransalliance.com.

The statistic that veterans comprise more than 12% of the U.S. Forest Service workforce is drawn from USDA reporting and reflects data as of 2013; current figures may differ. USDA, “Veterans Find Training, Jobs with the U.S. Forest Service,” November 8, 2013. Available at usda.gov.

 

Lend your skills to a cause!

Saluting Branches is an organization of arborists and tree care professionals who volunteer their time and skill to care for trees at landscapes and properties dedicated to veterans. This year’s day of service is September 16. If you’d like to find out how to volunteer at an event in your area, you can visit https://www.salutingbranches.org/.