For the past two summers, a unique overnight camp has been springing to life in the heart of California’s forests. But instead of traditional camp activities like lanyard-making or telling late-night ghost stories, participants here are learning how to collect cones — an essential step in restoring the state’s fire-ravaged forests.

Welcome to Cone Camp, which brings together forestry professionals and managers with conifer seed experts from around the state (along with the occasional canine companion) to learn everything about cones, from cone surveying and collection to seed saving. It’s all part of a growing effort to train a skilled workforce capable of gathering the seeds needed to restore California’s vast forests following high-severity wildfires and other threats that are rapidly changing forested ecosystems in the state.

This summer, American Forests hosted six Cone Camps in forests across the state, introducing more than 175 people to cone collection through a partnership with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and the USDA Forest Service.

Here are a few stories from participants who’ve found hope, community and purpose through Cone Camp:

Curiosity about reforestation challenges leads to a new career opportunity

On August 4, the Dixie Fire roared through Greenville, burning most of the buildings in town, including Lachman’s home. “It was a moment that catalyzed a lot of change,” he says. Eventually, he moved back to Sacramento, Calif. “I needed some time away. I needed to figure out if I still wanted to be involved in forestry at all and what that would look like.”

Still, during his drives on mountain roads, he couldn’t help noticing the devastating effects of threats like bark beetle infestation and fire damage on the surrounding forests. He started wondering what could be done about these challenges. Seeking insight, he decided to go to the very first gathering for the Reforestation Pipeline Partnership between American Forests, CAL FIRE and the Forest Service.

Because he came on his own, he says, “I was really nervous that you had to have an association or be with an agency, but everyone was really welcoming. I walked away from it feeling happier and more excited and more energized than I had been in years. I wanted to lean into that feeling.” He stayed in touch with the American Forests team, and in the summer of 2023, started a job with the Bureau of Land Management’s Mother Lode Office doing cone surveys in the foothills of the central Sierra Nevada.

His first stop: Cone Camp in Gazelle, Calif., near the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Here, he learned cone surveying techniques, then shadowed an experienced cone surveyor with the Bureau of Land Management for several days before setting off to do his own surveys.

Now, Lachman works as a nursery and reforestation specialist with the Sierra Nevada Alliance at the L.A. Moran Reforestation Center in Davis, Calif. This summer, he came to the Placerville Cone Camp as a team member and experienced cone surveyor, presenting on a new CAL FIRE approach he helped develop to purchase cones directly from tree-climbing cone collectors, and on how to use a survey app to collect data on cones.

Each Cone Camp location offers different opportunities. In Placerville, Calif., the group did a combination of visiting the Forest Service’s Region 5 conifer nursery and the Institute for Forest Genetics, followed by a climbing demonstration and surveying practice in Eldorado National Forest.

Wherever you go, “you learn a lot of depth about the field, the nuances and intricacies of the reforestation pipeline and what people are doing to address the bottleneck,” he says. “And Cone Camp is just a lot of fun.”

Now, Lachman works with Cone Corps through the Sierra Nevada Alliance at the L.A. Moran Reforestation Center in Davis, Calif. This summer, he came to the Placerville Cone Camp as a team member and experienced cone surveyor, presenting on a new CAL FIRE approach he helped develop to purchase cones directly from tree-climbing cone collectors, and on how to use a survey app to collect data on cones.

Spreading hope and building community in a region devastated by wildfire

Through Cone Corps, she also started picking up additional forestry certifications, including basic chainsaw and tree-climbing training. Being a part of the Cone Corps “really provided a great foot in the door into the forestry field, especially the reforestation side of things,” she says. Once she finished her term, she was hired as American Forests’ California Reforestation Pipeline Partnership manager. This summer, she helped run the six Cone Camps throughout the state and is planning several one-day trainings for partner organizations later this year.

One of the best things about the Cone Camps is the opportunity to build community and spread both enthusiasm and best practices for reforestation, Oelrichs says. “So much in the forest industry is unwritten information,” she says. “It’s a huge knowledge-sharing opportunity.”

A passion for giant sequoias sends one Cone Camper high into the trees

California’s big trees were one of the main things that lured Eva Lopez to the West. After getting her master’s degree in biology in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and working in a tree ring laboratory, she came to Sequoia National Park, where she started on a demography crew. She quickly moved into crew leadership positions, before starting to work with the Sierra Nevada Alliance, where she’s now a reforestation coordinator and part of American Forests’ Cone Corps. After seeing the damage to the park after large fires like 2021’s KNP Complex Fire, she says, “I was really motivated to try to help out some restoration efforts and reforestation efforts.”

In her first three months on the job, she and her team planted 350,000 seedlings. “Then I started getting into cones,” she says, which included the opportunity to train and become a certified tree-climbing cone collector.

Going into this year’s Cone Camp in the southern Sierra, she felt like a new cone collector, but because of her recent experience, she ended up teaching other attendees how to use an air-powered tree access launcher: “It’s like a potato gun that you pump up with a bicycle pump,” she says. Tree climbers use this tool to shoot their ropes high into trees, while on-the-ground cone collectors sometimes use it to throw a rope over the tip of a branch and pull off cones.

Cone Camp, she says, was a great place to learn and practice technical skills, from cone cutting to determining seed viability and when cones mature. “Trying to figure out the timing of that sometimes seems more of an art than a science, because, you know, you can’t look inside the cones from afar,” she says. “Not only do people learn the skills, but they can also learn some of that insider knowledge.”

During Cone Camp, Lopez also helped give a tree-climbing demonstration and lead a cone-themed yoga class. “We definitely did tree pose,” she says. The class provided an antidote to climate doom and another way to connect. “At the end, we did a few minutes of meditation where I invited everybody to think about their favorite cone or their favorite tree and what it was.” The class ended up talking about their favorite trees. “It was a really nice community experience,” she says, “and afterward, everybody seemed more comfortable with each other.”