SOUTH HADLEY — On a wooded hill on more than 100 acres of private property, Phoebe Weinberg, her face obscured by a shield attached to her hard hat, begins cutting down an olive tree growing over a red oak sapling. The roar of the chainsaw drowns out the sound of a branch of the invasive shrub falling to the ground, its leaves echoing with the impact.

Weinberg wastes no time and saws off one branch after another until only a few stumps remain.

While Weinberg moves on to the next olive tree, Miles Plitt sprays a blue herbicide onto the exposed stump tissue, which the plant absorbs into its roots through its vascular tissue. Invasive species grow aggressively, and as long as there is a root system underground, the olive tree will regenerate. The chemical ensures that the tree does not grow back.

Weinberg and Plitt work their way across the hillside for nearly an hour, hoeing and spreading until the invasive species that once made up about 30 percent of the hillside’s woody cover are gone. This type of invasive species control is time-consuming and expensive, but demand for such work is growing almost as fast as a bittersweet vine.

Invasive species violate federal climate goals that rely on native trees to absorb and sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Biodiversity around invasive species also declines because a single species can overgrow an area and monopolize the space, sunlight and nutrients that native species need.

A major problem is that there are not enough people certified to do this type of work.

“(Demand) is increasing because the federal government is giving a lot more money to the states and the states themselves – they want to plant trees, they want to treat invasive species to build forest resilience,” said Laura Marx, a climate scientist at The Nature Conservancy. “They want to manage all the things that could cause a number of trees not to grow the way we actually expect them to. We can’t grow our workforce at that rate.”

The Nature Conservancy, with an office in Great Barrington, has launched a pilot program called the NextGen Forest Project to train the next generation of foresters while planting the next generation of trees. The program will provide three trainees with hands-on experience in managing invasive species and setting up tree guards and cages for young seedlings.

In partnership with the Forest Stewards Guild, the first year of the program matches landowners in Massachusetts and Vermont who are interested in active forestry work with the trainees and their supervisor. The Guild is responsible for the training, while The Nature Conservancy contacts private landowners and arranges where the young foresters will do their work. In addition to South Hadley, the program’s trainee foresters work on private land in several other communities in Hampshire and Franklin counties, including Conway, Hawley, Huntington and West Chesterfield.

In Massachusetts, 96 private and 35 public foresters are listed on the Licensed Foresters Registry. Although every registered forester must have some experience in ecological forestry, not every forester on the list gets their hands dirty for a job: Some simply examine forests and recommend treatments rather than perform them, while others spend time researching the latest forestry techniques.

“As in many other industries, many of the foresters are older,” Marx stressed. “At 70, you probably won’t be doing it anymore. It’s very hard work, physically demanding. So in a way, you get too old for it.”

Otis Wood, a forester who works for the Forest Stewards Guild in Vermont, says there are “not nearly enough (people) to keep up with rapidly growing populations of invasive species,” so he is training Weinberg and Plitt in the skills and certifications needed for a career in this type of forestry work.

Get to know the industry

While explaining the program in an interview, Plitt uses a handsaw to cut olive branches into more manageable pieces. Before this training, his only experience with forestry was with his college’s landscape gardening crew. But because the crew leader didn’t have herbicide certification, the group just cut invasive species back to a small stump and crossed their fingers that they wouldn’t grow back.

He learned about the NextGen Forest Project through an email sent to students at Warren Wilson College and decided to apply. After two months in the program, he believes he has a solid understanding of the industry.

“Depending on what species are on site, I know what kind of equipment we need to bring if we need to do foliar or special treatments. I’ve learned a lot about what treatment we need to do depending on what species are present,” he said. “We’ve also learned a little bit about budgeting, like going out, visiting a site, seeing what’s there, seeing how much of it is there (and) overestimating.”

A week earlier, in another area of ​​the property, Plitt had installed tree barriers around seedlings of native hardwoods such as red oak and red maple. To do this, he wraps plastic sheeting around a young tree, sticks bamboo stakes in the ground to hold the sheeting in place, and then secures the bamboo to the tree with zip ties. The plastic sheeting will deter deer looking for a snack, protect the tree for at least six years, and ensure its survival.

At this site, however, the interns are only working on invasive species control. Wood points to a native dogwood seedling that had previously been overgrown by an olive tree and bittersweet vine. The young tree had been deformed by the phantom weight and bent by the invasive plant that once towered over it. Wood said the patch of light illuminating the seedling, once blocked by the olive tree’s canopy, will allow it to recover.

“So this thing is going to be happy for the next few years, and that’s our goal, for this thing and the (speckled) alder to be in charge here,” Wood said.

Forest dynamics

The trainees also received a crash course in forest dynamics – from carbon storage, a term for a system that can store or release carbon, to woody stands, areas of forest where trees can grow for potential harvest. Invasive species pose a problem for young trees and deciduous shrubs, Wood said, as they aggressively displace and smother key native plants.

The pearl alder, for example, is an important food source for beavers and a source of charcoal for humans, but is quickly being displaced by the autumn olive tree.

“Invasive species basically follow us humans,” he said. “Large-scale human disturbances are where most invasive species occur.”

All this knowledge is applied in practice as Plitt observes the role and impact of active forest management measures on the future of forests in the Northeast.

“When I look at the roadsides and people’s properties, I can see how quickly (invasive species) are spreading and how quickly it’s becoming really uncontrollable,” Plitt said. “It’s almost uncontrollable, but if we don’t start now, if we don’t pick up the pace a little bit, we’re going to fall behind irreparably.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at [email protected].