Apprenticeship Program Aims To Help California's Struggling Logging Industry

Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, April 2, 2025…

• California’s logging industry has been shrinking for years, with an aging workforce and fewer young people entering the trade. But in Northern California, a community college is stepping in to change that, helping to train the next generation of loggers through an innovative apprenticeship program. 
• The California snowpack is close to 100 percent for the third year in a row.  That hasn’t happened in three consecutive years since the late 1990s. 
• State lawmakers rejected two bills Tuesday aimed at banning transgender children from playing sports in California.

Apprenticeships Are Bringing New Workers To Heritage Industries

On a cold morning in October, the sun shone weakly through tall sugar pines and cedars in Shingletown, a small Northern California outpost whose name is a reminder of its history as a logging camp in the 1800s. Up a gravel road banked with iron-rich red soil, Dylan Knight took a break from stacking logs. Knight is one of 10 student loggers at Shasta College training to operate the heavy equipment required for modern-day logging: processors to remove limbs from logs that have just been cut, skidders to pull logs out of the cutting site, loaders to stack and sort the logs by species and masticators to mulch up debris.

For centuries, logging was a seasonal, learn-on-the-job trade passed down from father to son. But as climate change and innovations in the industry have changed logging into a year-round business, there aren’t always enough workers to fill jobs. “Our workforce was dying,” said Delbert Gannon, owner of Creekside Logging. “You couldn’t even pick from the bottom of the barrel. It was affecting our production and our ability to haul logs. We felt we had to do something.”

Around the country, community colleges are stepping in to run apprenticeship programs for heritage industries, such as logging and aquaculture, which are too small to run. These partnerships help colleges expand the workforce development programs central to their mission. The partnerships also help keep small businesses in small industries alive by managing state and federal grants and providing the equipment, courses and staff to train workers.

Retirements have hit Creekside Logging hard. In 2018 Gannon’s company had jobs to do, and the machines to do them, but nobody to do the work. He reached out to Shasta College, which offers certificates and degrees in forestry and heavy equipment operation, to see if there might be a student who could help. That conversation led to a formal partnership between the college and 19 timber companies to create a pre-apprenticeship course in Heavy Equipment Logging Operations. Soon after, they formed the California Registered Apprenticeship Forest Training program. Shasta College used $3.5 million in grant funds to buy the equipment pre-apprentices use.

Logging instruction takes place on land owned by Sierra Pacific Industries lumber company — which does not employ its own loggers and so relies on companies like Creekside Lumber to fell and transport logs to mills. Each semester, 10 student loggers like Knight take the pre-apprenticeship course at Shasta College. Nearly all are hired upon completion. Once employed, they continue their work as apprentices in the forest training program, which Shasta College runs in partnership with employers like Gannon. State apprenticeship funds help employers offset the cost of training new workers, as well as the lost productivity of on-the-job mentors.

Late Storms Boost Snowpack, Hitting A 3-Year Streak Not Seen In Decades

After a boost from late-season storms, the California snowpack is coming into April at nearly 100% of average for the third year in a row — a streak that hasn’t happened since the end of the 1990s, according to state climatologist Mike Anderson.

Farmers and cities across the state rely on this frozen reservoir for water supplies as the snowpack melts in spring and summer.

Across the northern Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade peaks, the snowpack is at 118% of the historical April 1 average; it’s 91% and 84% in the central and southern Sierra, respectively. Statewide, it sits at 96% of average.

Reservoir levels statewide, meanwhile, are mostly above average. Lake Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir and part of the federal Central Valley Project, is at 113% of its average capacity for April 1. Lake Oroville, the biggest reservoir within the State Water Project, is at 121% of average.

CA Lawmakers Reject Bills To Ban Trans Athletes’ Participation In Girls Sports

California lawmakers won’t change state policies allowing transgender kids and teens to play on sports teams consistent with their gender identities amid heated nationwide debates over the participation of trans youth in athletics.

Democratic lawmakers on the state Assembly’s Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism rejected two proposals by Republican lawmakers on Tuesday after hours of impassioned debate and commentary.

One bill would have required the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports, to adopt rules banning students whose sex was assigned male at birth from participating on a girls school sports team. The other would have reversed a 2013 law allowing students to participate in sex-segregated school programs, including on sports teams, and use bathrooms and other facilities that align with their gender identity. It would have applied to K-12 and college students.

The hearing came a day after Transgender Day of Visibility, and weeks after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom angered his political allies when he suggested on his podcast it’s unfair for transgender athletes to participate in girls sports.