Catalina Solorsano, a Klamath Falls mother of two, has crisscrossed southern Oregon and Northern California working in the heat and rain to lessen the risk of mega fires.
On Monday, she and eight other tribal members graduated as entry-level firefighters and ecological restoration workers. They are joining a workforce that blends ancient and modern approaches to forest health to better withstand wildfires.
Removing fire fuels is high-risk, critical work, especially in a region where a drier, hotter fire season is predicted.
Most people see the flames and smoke of wildfires from a distance. They watch air tankers drop water or fire retardant onto the blaze. What they can’t easily see are the crews on the ground in advance of fire season and beyond.
To prepare for their challenging job, Solorsano, 25, and the other new graduates received 18 weeks of paid, immersive training with Lomakatsi Restoration Project, a respected Ashland-based nonprofit.
They worked alongside forestry and fire professionals with the U.S. Forest Service as well as tribal staff and private contractors.
Wearing yellow helmets and thick gloves, the young members of the nonprofit’s Inter-Tribal Oregon Conservation Corps used chainsaws to remove small- to medium-sized trees, often Douglas-firs, to protect larger, older pines and oaks that anchor the forest ecosystem.
They stacked dead wood and tarped the piles to let them dry out until crews return to carefully burn the slash piles in the wet winter season.
The young firefighters in yellow fire-retardant clothing also mopped up hotspots after highly trained crews methodically set low-intensity prescribed fires to clear forest understories.
The prescribed fire team used drip torches to spread burning fuel in controlled patterns. They burned in strips 5 to 10 feet long to manage the fire’s size and speed.
They work downhill, burning uphill fuel first, denying fire its natural tendency to race up a slope. This technique prevents the fire from gaining dangerous momentum.
Crews monitoring the flames had specialized tools and water hoses ready to douse spot fires that cross the control line.
Under the right conditions, low-to-the-ground fire burns noxious weeds and dry debris, and cycles nutrients back into the soil.
The demanding work is exhilarating, “definitely a rush,” said Solorsano, who lives in Klamath Falls and is an enrolled member of the Klamath Tribes.
To become firefighter type 2 crew members, she and the other new graduates had to take rigorous coursework, practice hands-on techniques and pass a physical fitness test.
“After a day working with a chainsaw, your arms are like jelly,” Solorsano said, “but it’s nice to see the progress we make.”
Paid training
Since its inception in 1995, Lomakatsi has trained more than 3,000 people in forest and aquatic habitat restoration. The nonprofit offers a variety of paid training programs for people 16-30 and military veterans up to age 35.
There is no tuition, and clothing, equipment and tools are provided through grants and other funding, said Belinda Brown of Lomakatsi.
Last year, Lomakatsi trained 65 tribal and rural youth through its various programs. Training has been at the heart of the organization that was founded as the region transitioned from a timber-based economy to a restoration economy.
Lomakatsi plans to offer a 2,000-hour accredited apprenticeship program later this year for people interested in applied ecology and technical forestry.
As a Public Land Corps, Lomakatsi can certify 640 hours that the trainees work on federal and tribal lands, which gives them priority consideration for federal jobs.
Graduates of Lomakatsi’s programs are hired by tribal natural resource departments, state and federal agencies, forestry services contractors and nonprofits like Lomakatsi.
Others start their own businesses and sign contracts with private and public land owners to provide ongoing fuel reduction work, which is both safer and more cost-effective than responding to active wildfires.
A new grant with Oregon State University allows Lomakatsi to provide training for tribal and Latino community members to start their own forestry services and restoration businesses.
The first step toward a career in wildfire mitigation is to enroll in a program.
Solorsano and her group worked on public, tribal trust and private lands, from the Willamette Valley south to the Shasta Cascade region of Northern California.
The work is intimidating at first, she said, but Lomakatsi wants people to succeed. As a single mother, Solorsano said she needed extra time to complete the program, but she said she felt supported, not frustrated.
If an obstacle came up, like the time she didn’t have a ride to get to a job site, Lomakatsi found a way to make it happen. “I was never without work with Lomakatsi,” Solorsano said. “It’s a wonderful feeling that you find family in the workplace.”
Solorsano can apply to receive more paid vocational training to eventually have a career in wildland fire or natural resource management.
“I dove into this headfirst because I needed a better job,“ said Solorsano. ”But it’s more than a paycheck. I really enjoy being out there with people proud of our work and helping in fuel reduction. It’s very rewarding."
Skilled in ancient fire
Everyone trained by Lomakatsi learns modern fire management along with practices similar to those Indigenous peoples used over thousands of years to maintain open forests.
Before gold prospectors arrived in southwest Oregon’s Rogue Basin in 1852, the forest floor was regularly burned by lightning and by the Shasta, Takelma and Athabaskan peoples.
This natural approach improved watershed and forest health while propagating First Foods like camas, medicines and materials for basket weaving, said Brown, a member of the Kosealekte Band of the Pit River Tribe and Northern Paiute descendant.
Brown leads Lomakatsi’s Tribal Partnerships Program, which contributes to forest and watershed restoration across tribal trust and ancestral lands.
Regular fire intervals stopped after 1856 as settlers sought to protect new communities.
Decades of fire suppression led to unhealthy and overly dense conditions, said Marko Bey, founder and executive director of Lomakatsi.
Lomakatsi means “life in balance” in the Hopi language and Bey, a former tree planter working on federal lands, is recognized for reintroducing prescribed fire to prepared sites in Oregon.
Chris Chambers, forestry officer at Ashland Fire & Rescue, said, “Lomakatsi has probably done more work in setting the stage to return prescribed fire to the landscape than actual burning, which has been and continues to be the heaviest lift.”
In 2025, Lomakatsi’s crews and the contractors it hired completed more than 38,200 acres of fuel reduction and restoration work on wildfire-prone land in Oregon and Northern California.
As part of post-wildfire reforestation projects, they planted or seeded more than 9,500 native trees and vegetation to enhance wildlife habitat and cultural uses.
All of the work is complex and demanding, and the need for a well-trained workforce continues to grow.
Solorsano has recommended the program to her family — her brother and nephew were among her graduating class. “I’d really like to see more women out there,” she said.
Protecting ancestral lands
Solorsano and the other new firefighters earned certification from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group in the basics of wildland firefighting. They were taught incident command systems and safe chainsaw operation for restoration and hazard fuel reduction as well as first aid and CPR.
At Monday’s graduation in Klamath Falls, the group also received cultural monitoring certification reflecting the training they received from archaeologists.
They know the process of identifying artifacts and protecting culturally significant sites during restoration work, said Lomakatsi’s Brown.
“A cultural survey is the work done pre-project and onsite cultural monitoring allows our crews to keep an eye out for risks to artifacts and the cultural landscape,” said Brown.
Seneca Hescock, 22, joined Lomakatsi in July 2022 and first earned certifications as a firefighter type 2.
Hescock, an enrolled member of the Klamath Tribes and Northern Paiute descendant, is now a tribal forestry technician working in south-central Oregon’s Fremont-Winema National Forest, his ancestral homelands.
Hescock, who lives in Chiloquin, said his four years of training with Lomakatsi have helped him be a wildland firefighter and a cultural practitioner.
“If I see an artifact, the area is flagged off, archaeologists are called in to confirm the object and we map it and put the information in a database that allows people in the future to know that it’s there,” he said.
Hescock said Lomakatsi is well regarded in the wildfire mitigation industry, but not well known to the general public.
“For us, we definitely enjoy what we do and as we like to say, ‘it’s a blessing to be out in the woods, giving back to the forest that provides so much to us,’” he said.
Funding the work
Lomakatsi and its partners, who also hire Lomakatsi graduates, work on landscape-scale forest and watershed restoration projects.
A part of the complex work Lomakatsi does to protect public forests and private lands requires ecologists, foresters and ecocultural specialists to create a plan. Skilled ground crews then precisely execute the plan.
They are currently working in the Rogue, Klamath, Pit, Willamette, Columbia and Smith river watersheds, and the Harney and Great basins.
Last year, Lomakatsi’s work supported 85 full-time positions and 25 seasonal positions within the organization.
The nonprofit also supported more than 500 additional seasonal jobs, employing contractors from forestry crews, timber operators and archaeologists, according to executive director Bey.
If Lomakatsi is managing 300 to 400 people on the ground in peak season, a dozen different operators could be providing their workforce. Bey refers to these crews as “the hands that touch the land.”
This year, Lomakatsi gained access to a substantial funding tool. The OrCal Regional Restoration Forest Resilience Bond, provided by the conservation finance organization Blue Forest, functions as an interest-free revolving line of credit.
Lomakatsi can draw up to $2 million as needed — potentially 5 to 10 times per year — to quickly respond to time-sensitive work by providing immediate access to capital to pay crews and contractors, said Bey.
Lomakatsi pays off the line of credit after receiving government reimbursements Lomakatsi has secured through its long-term agreements.
“With longer fire seasons in the region that restrict restoration operations, we have limited windows to get as much of this critical work done as we can, and Blue Forest is an important partner in making that possible,” said Bey.
Information about Lomakatsi’s workforce training programs including the upcoming 12-week Tribal Stewards summer training program is at lomakatsi.org.
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