Wood for Life turns downed trees into firewood for Indigenous communities, teaches job skills

The roars of chainsaws and ATV engines echoed last week through an area of the Coconino National Forest west of Flagstaff as youth crews collected and processed wood for Navajo and Hopi communities.

The crews are part of Wood for Life, which worked Thursday afternoon to repurpose downed trees from various forest health and restoration projects into much-needed firewood and building materials for nearby tribal communities.

Now in its fourth year, the program is the result of a partnership between the Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps, the National Forest Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service and more. This year, Wood for Life also received a $50,000 boost from the Arizona Lottery Gives Back program.

Wood for Life solves two problems with one solution

When Matt McGrath first started as the Flagstaff District Ranger for the U.S. Forest Service almost five years ago, the agency struggled to manage materials leftover from forest health and wildfire prevention projects.

Traditional timber sales often leave behind large slash piles that the agency then needs to burn during the off-season while many trees that were initially removed to limit the spread of wildfire were often stacked in massive log decks that then have nowhere to go, McGrath said.

"The fire danger continues to exist," he said. "Just instead of it being spread across a large area, its this giant fire risk concentrated right there."

At the same time the agency was looking for ways to manage their stockpiles of timber, indigenous communities across Arizona and in the Four Corners region were really struggling due to a lack of fuel for cooking and heating, a situation that was only exacerbated by the 2019 closure of the Navajo Generating Plant.

To meet both needs, Wood for Life was born.

Marshall Masayesva, the Hopi Coordinator for the Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps, was integral in the development of the program and worked to ensure the mission was guided by an indigenous perspective.

For example, the smaller branches and tree limbs that ultimately become slash piles can instead be turned into much-needed mulch for gardening and agriculture, which is needed more and more because of climate change and the continued desertification of reservation land, Masayesva said.

"The entirety of the tree can be used for a purpose," he said. "We could utilize the entire tree and our forest resources to address a lot of the issues that we have at home."

For the first time, in addition to firewood, the crews are also preparing large posts for building, which Masayesva hopes will also begin addressing the community's housing crisis.

As the list for housing assistance on the reservation stretches on, many households remain overcrowded and rarely have modern amenities or proper insulation, he said. By giving them building materials, he hopes they can start addressing their own housing issues.

"So the more that we encourage our own people to revitalize our building practices and provide the material to be able to do so … we could address multiple issues at the same time," he said.

The success of the program is evident to McGrath each time he drives through the forest, he said, as fewer and fewer log decks are scattered throughout.

"We need to get rid of this wood, they have a need for it," McGrath said. "It just lines up really, really well."

Indigenous youth gain life skills while serving their communities

The program has also created opportunities for Native youth to learn job skills while at the same time ultimately giving back to their communities.

While Aeon Albert oversees new youth crews now as a program manager with Ancestral Lands, she started the same way everyone else does.

First, everyone is trained on the equipment and procedures and then they get to work, camping just a few hundred yards away from the worksite, for nine days at a time.

"You're really throwing yourself into something that's not like any other job," Albert said.

Albert explained that a lot of Hopi are really hands-on and don't always perfectly align with the mold of our education system. And while she herself had a good post-secondary educational experience, she said she knows that is not the case for many in her community.

Through this program, she's hoping to show people there is another path to a successful career.

"Being able to allow other young people to see that you can run a chainsaw and that can be your career is really amazing," she said.

"I think my main goal within the program is just to be able to give them a different perspective and be able to help them figure out where they want to go, even if it is post-secondary education," she said.

On days when the job feels particularly challenging, like when temperatures surpass 100 degrees or when monsoon rains won't ease up, Albert said she relies on the Hopi value of contributing to her community and her home as motivation.

"I think its really reaching down into your heart and being able to find that mentality that's going to keep you going," she said.

Reach the reporter at LLatch@gannett.com.

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