Silviculture & Tree-Planting Contracting
The industry — Support activities for forestry
Base industry report for 1153 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 1,667
- Under 10 employeesA
- 75%
- Establishments · USA
- 1,979
- Employment · USA
- 15,609
- Payroll · USA
- $937M
Of 1,667 Canadian establishments with employees, 75% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
Execution decidesThe hurdles here are ones a better operator clears. That is not a promise of success — it is the absence of a structural reason you cannot win.
Prove the value in money the buyer already counts. The need is real; what is unproven is that this buyer moves budget for it. That is a priced test with real customers, not a product problem.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 1
The binding constraint — willingness to pay
Crew-based planting and stand-tending contracting, seasonal and reachable — and in Canada a genuine industry with a labour culture of its own. It cuts on who sets the price: the work is let by tender from a small number of licensees and provincial programmes, so the contractor bids against other contractors into a buyer's market, and the margin is whatever the lowest credible bid leaves. Piece-rate crews carry the volume risk, the contractor carries the weather and the camp cost, and neither carries pricing power. What a study would have to test: whether carbon-offset and reforestation-commitment money is actually paying a different rate from licensee silviculture obligations. If it is, that is a genuinely different customer with a different price, and this record should be reopened.
Crews, camps and seedlings move to the block, and the season is short and weather-bound. The market is the tenders let within a region for one season, not a national annual figure — a contractor cannot work a block it cannot camp beside.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
The field
Every operator named on this record, and what each one discloses. A private single-site operator discloses nothing, which is the normal case — the listed consolidators are the only window in.
Competitor set · 3 named · 0 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brinkman & Associates ReforestationC | not disclosed | — | Privately held. Claims on its own website to be Canada's largest full-cycle silviculture company, with 1,000+ employees; no revenue published |
| Western Forestry Contractors' Association membersB | not disclosed | — | The western contractors' trade body, quoted by the Province in its December 2024 planting release. Membership is the contractor population, not a firm, and no member list was read for this record |
| Owner-operator crew contractorsA | not disclosed | — | 968 of 1,667 Canadian establishments have 1–4 employees; British Columbia 645 and Quebec 488 (Statistics Canada, December 2023) |
Nobody here publishes revenue. The market is not sized for that reason — an estimate built on nothing would only look like knowledge.
Evidence
Evidence. British Columbia's 2024 planting volume, the description of that year's programme and the B.C. Timber Sales contract and tree counts were read in the Province's own news release of 23 December 2024 [A]; that release is also where the Western Forestry Contractors' Association appears as the industry's voice. Establishment counts are Statistics Canada, December 2023, and County Business Patterns 2022 [A]. Brinkman's scale figures are its own website's claims and are tier C — no accounts are published and none were sought. Not sourced: contract rates in this industry are not published at all, they sit in tender documents between licensees and contractors, so nothing on this record establishes what a hectare or a tree pays. Provincial volumes outside British Columbia, including Quebec's, were not researched even though Quebec holds 488 of the establishments. The carbon-offset question named in the reason is the one thing that could change the conclusion and it remains UNVERIFIED. Verify before acting.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Contractor, nursery, supplier and licensee members; no count published; holds an annual conference and a Business & Market Summit.
Member companies listed on its Membres page (counted 54 entries; page updated Jul 2026). aetsq.qc.ca redirects here.
Registered members per the board's own stats (21,967 posts); tree planters' phpBB board, latest post 22 Sep 2026.
Professional forestry body since 1908 with 18 regional sections; broader than silviculture contracting; no member count on site.
Planters talk on Replant.ca (which also links to r/treeplanting, left off because Reddit refused automated access); contractors talk through WFCA and AETSQ.