Support Activities for Forestry (NAICS 11531): An Investor's Primer

1. Overview

Support Activities for Forestry is the "hands and services" layer of the American forest economy — the specialist firms and crews that do the work around growing and harvesting trees without owning the timberland or running the sawmill: planting seedlings after a harvest or fire, cruising (measuring and valuing) standing timber, writing forest management plans, thinning and spraying young stands, controlling pests, and fighting and preventing forest fires, including dropping retardant from aircraft.[1][2]

At this level — NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 11531, a five-digit "industry" — there is only one thing to know structurally: this industry is effectively identical to its single child, NAICS 115310. The five-digit rollup and the six-digit detail industry describe exactly the same activity; the code simply repeats at the more granular level. This page therefore covers the level's own ground-truth statistics and points you to the child primer for full detail.

For the complete treatment — structure, investable universe, economics, demand drivers, regulation, consolidation, risks, and how-to-invest — see the primer for NAICS 115310. Everything below is a summary.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS 11531 contains exactly one child industry:

Because there is only one child, the five-digit industry (11531) and the six-digit industry (115310) are the same population of businesses with the same definition. The U.S. Census Bureau simply carries the code down one more digit without splitting it. There is no aggregation to do and no second segment to weigh — the rollup is its child.

The work inside splits into three buckets: reforestation and stand tending (tree planting, seeding, site preparation, thinning, herbicide application); forest measurement and consulting (timber cruising, valuation, inventory, management plans, and increasingly carbon-inventory work); and forest protection (firefighting, fire prevention, aerial retardant, and pest and disease control).[1][2]

Note what this level excludes, because it shapes every data point: growing the seedlings (113210), owning timberland to sell standing timber (113110, where the big timberland real estate investment trusts, or REITs, sit), the actual logging (113310), and government forest administration such as the U.S. Forest Service and state agencies (Public Administration, 924120).[2][3]

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

Because 11531 equals 115310, this level's statistics are the child's statistics. From the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (2023, employer businesses only) — our ground-truth federal source for this level:[4]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' industry-productivity series, which includes wage and salary workers, unincorporated self-employed workers, and unpaid family workers, reports broader employment: 24,200 jobs in 2023, 25,500 in 2024, and 26,700 in 2025.[5] These figures should not be divided by the CBP establishment count to infer average firm size, as they represent a broader employment concept.

Undercount — read before trusting any single figure. These employer statistics materially understate true activity for four reasons, all of which matter more here than in most industries because small and individual ownership dominates:

1. Government does much of the work in-house. Federal and state agencies employ tens of thousands of wildland firefighters, foresters, and reforestation crews, all classified as public administration (924120), not 11531. The private figures capture only the outsourced slice.[2]
2. Seasonality hides the peak. The 15,361 headcount is a mid-March (off-season) snapshot; first-quarter payroll was only ~19% of the full-year total, evidence that employment swells during spring planting and summer fire seasons.[4]
3. Tiny and self-employed operators are excluded. Consulting foresters and one-person crews often file as nonemployer businesses, outside the employer counts above.
4. Guest-worker labor churns. Much reforestation is done by seasonal H-2B guest workers hired through contractors, whose numbers ebb and flow with season and visa availability.[6]

A private-sector industry-revenue estimate (IBISWorld, "Forest Support Services") puts the sector near $3.5 billion in 2024 — larger than the ~$1 billion payroll suggests, and still only the outsourced core of a much bigger effort once government crews are counted.[7] Treat the federal figures as the private, outsourced, employer slice.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

With only one child, there is nothing to allocate across segments — value concentrates exactly where it does in 115310. In brief: there is no clean public forestry-services stock. The listed operators whose fortunes track forest-support activity are Perimeter Solutions (NYSE: PRM), a fire-retardant and firefighting-foam supplier that is the sole provider of long-term retardant to the U.S. Forest Service, and Bridger Aerospace (NASDAQ: BAER), an aerial firefighting operator running Super Scooper aircraft on government contracts ($122.8 million revenue in 2025, highly seasonal with 87% of revenue from three customers).[8][9] Timberland REITs — Weyerhaeuser (NYSE: WY) and Rayonier (NYSE: RYN), the latter having completed its merger with PotlatchDeltic on January 30, 2026 to form an approximately 4.1-million-acre combined company — are demand-side proxies (they own land, code 113110, not services).[3][10][11] The industry itself is overwhelmingly private: forest-management and consulting firms (American Forest Management, managing more than 5.7 million acres with over 370 employees and exclusive contractors; F&W Forestry), timberland investment management organizations (TIMOs) that hire these services, and several hundred wildland-fire and reforestation contractors.[12][13][14] See 115310 for the full table and detail.

5. How the money works

Owners sell time, crews, and materials against forest work; the economics look like contracting and professional services, not manufacturing or real estate. Reforestation and stand work is priced per acre (thin margins — the crew is the cost); consulting and cruising is fee-for-service or a share of timber value (a billable-utilization business); fire suppression runs on day rates plus standby and mobilization (feast-or-famine by fire-season severity); aerial firefighting carries high fixed costs with profitability dependent on flight hours and availability contracts; and retardant/materials sell per gallon and per base.[8][9][14][15] Costs are dominated by seasonal labor (largely H-2B in reforestation) plus fuel, equipment, insurance, and the performance bonds government contracts require. Utilization and season length are the profit levers, and slow-paying government contracts strain working capital.[6][14]

6. Demand drivers

The same forces that drive 115310 drive this level in full: timber harvest levels (replanting follows logging, which tracks lumber, pulp, and housing starts); reforestation funding — the 2021 REPLANT Act (Repairing Existing Public Land by Adding Necessary Trees) uncapped the federal Reforestation Trust Fund against a more than 4-million-acre backlog, and the Forest Service completed more than 231,000 acres of reforestation in fiscal 2024; wildfire severity and firefighting budgets (federal suppression has averaged roughly $3 billion a year, about $3.2 billion in 2023, with research finding annual forest area burned increased tenfold and high-severity area fifteenfold between 1985 and 2022); prescribed fire expansion (prescribed fire already accounts for more than half of annually burned area in the U.S.); forest-health shocks (bark beetles, invasive pests); carbon markets (new demand for measurement and verification); and landowner turnover among TIMOs, REITs, and families.[4][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]

7. Regulation

The defining regulatory dependency is immigration policy — seasonal reforestation labor runs largely on the H-2B temporary non-agricultural guest-worker program (statutory annual cap of 66,000, often supplemented — an extra ~64,700 was released for fiscal 2026), so visa availability directly limits planting capacity.[6][23] Also material: labor and wage law (Fair Labor Standards Act, Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, with a history of Department of Labor enforcement and mandated wage rates for tree-planting jobs); worker safety under Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules; environmental regulation (standard-practice silvicultural runoff is generally exempt from Clean Water Act Section 402 permitting, but Section 404 wetlands requirements and other federal and state laws still apply; prescribed burning must fit smoke-management requirements); state forest-practice acts (Oregon, Washington, California mandate post-harvest reforestation, effectively guaranteeing demand); and contracting/aviation standards (incident "carding" qualifications, Federal Aviation Administration oversight of aerial operators, EPA/state pesticide licensing).[24][25][26]

8. Consolidation

The industry is highly fragmented and localized — average firm size ~7.6 employees — with low barriers to entry for a labor crew (a truck, tools, and a bonded contract).[4] Consolidation is uneven: it is most advanced where scale and certification matter most (fire retardant is effectively a single-supplier market under Perimeter Solutions; forestry consulting has seen roll-ups led by American Forest Management), while the labor-crew and small-consulting tiers remain a long tail of independents.[8][12] A structural quirk: government is simultaneously the biggest customer and a direct competitor, insourcing or outsourcing crews by budget and politics.[4]

9. Risks

Concentrated in the same places as 115310: labor supply and immigration policy (any H-2B tightening constrains revenue directly; the industry also carries reputational and legal risk from past guest-worker abuses, including a 2012 judgment exceeding $11.8 million against forestry contractors for wage theft); feast-or-famine seasonality (mild fire years or wet planting windows idle crews and aircraft); commodity and housing cyclicality; government-budget and contract concentration (shutdowns, cuts, re-competes — Bridger's three largest customers supplied 87% of its 2025 revenue); federal-project execution bottlenecks (GAO found Forest Service timber-sale work constrained by staff shortages, with the agency's workforce falling about 20% during fiscal 2025 and some forest-program vacancy rates above 40%); seed and nursery capacity constraints; safety and liability (fatal risk in fire and chainsaw work); climate change (more fire means more demand, but drought and heat raise costs and hurt seedling survival — larger severe-burn scars increasingly fail to regenerate naturally); and thin margins and working capital strain from slow government payment.[6][9][14][27][28][29]

10. How to invest & outlook

Public-market routes are limited and none is a clean bet: the closest listed operators are Perimeter Solutions (PRM), a fire-safety chemicals and services company, and Bridger Aerospace (BAER), an aerial firefighting operator with extreme seasonality and government-customer concentration — both concentrated, single-niche bets; timberland REITs (WY, RYN) and equipment makers (Deere, Caterpillar) offer only diluted, demand-side reads.[3][8][9][10] The industry is genuinely owned in private markets — buying or building reforestation, forest-management/consulting, or wildland-fire contracting businesses, most of which fall under the U.S. Small Business Administration's small-business ceiling (~$11.5 million in receipts for this industry).[30]

Technology's effect: Drones, lidar, satellite imagery, and photogrammetry can reduce field time and improve inventory, fire mapping, and treatment monitoring. Forest Service trials found drone- and airborne-laser tree counts closely aligned. The likely result is substitution away from some manual cruising and toward geospatial analysis, while field sampling, marking, and treatment remain necessary.[31][32]

Outlook: structurally growing but perennially cyclical and labor-constrained. Tailwinds — uncapped REPLANT Act funding against a multi-million-acre backlog, elevated wildfire budgets, and emerging forest-carbon consulting — point up; the swing factors — H-2B visa availability, federal appropriations, and weather/commodity volatility — make any single year hard to predict.[16][17][21][23] Disciplined private operators with reliable crews and clean safety and compliance records are best positioned; public-market investors are largely limited to indirect exposure.

→ For full detail on every section above, see the primer for NAICS 115310 (Support Activities for Forestry), this level's sole child.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS Definition — 115310 Support Activities for Forestry," 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/
2. NAICS Association, "NAICS Code 115310 — Support Activities for Forestry" (definition, illustrative activities, cross-references), 2024. https://www.naics.com/naics-code-description/?code=115310
3. The Motley Fool, "Best Timberland REITs and How to Invest," 2026. https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/real-estate-investing/reit/timberland-reit/
4. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 115310/11531 (establishments, employment, annual and first-quarter payroll). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
5. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Industry Productivity Series via FRED, NAICS 115310 employment, 2025. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPUAN115310W200000000
6. Journal of Forestry (Oxford Academic), "H-2B Guest Workers and the Critical Role They Play in US Forests," 2021. https://academic.oup.com/jof/article-abstract/119/5/467/6255284
7. IBISWorld, "Forest Support Services in the US — Market Size," 2024. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/forest-support-services-united-states/
8. ExecutiveBiz / Perimeter Solutions (NYSE: PRM), "USDA Awards $1.12B Retardant Contract to Perimeter Solutions," 2024. https://www.executivebiz.com/articles/usda-perimeter-solutions-fire-retardant-contract-award
9. Bridger Aerospace Group Holdings (NASDAQ: BAER), Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1941536/000194153626000005/baer-20251231.htm
10. Rayonier Inc., Form 8-K announcing PotlatchDeltic merger completion, January 30, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/52827/000119312526032194/d63429d8k.htm
11. Rayonier Inc., Form 10-Q for first quarter 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1806931/000005282726000078/ryn-20260331.htm
12. American Forest Management, corporate site, 2025. https://www.americanforestmanagement.com/about-us
13. Forisk Consulting, "North America's Top Timberland Owners and Managers, 2025 Update," 2025. https://forisk.com/north-americas-top-timberland-owners-and-managers-2025-update/
14. National Wildfire Suppression Association / FireRescue1, "Private firefighters join the fight," 2024. https://nwsa.us/; https://www.firerescue1.com/wildfire-and-wildland-urban-interface/as-wildfires-rage-private-firefighters-join-the-fight-for-the-fortunate-few
15. Alabama Cooperative Extension System, "Costs & Trends of Southern Forestry Practices, 2022," 2023. https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/forestry/costs-trends-of-southern-forestry-practices-2022/
16. American Forests, "The REPLANT Act," and Sen. Rob Portman, "REPLANT Act Signed into Law," 2021. https://www.americanforests.org/our-programs/policy/replant-act/
17. U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Celebrating Three Years of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law at USDA" (231,000 acres reforested in FY2024; ~4-million-acre backlog), 2024. https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2024/11/15/fact-sheet-celebrating-three-years-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-usda
18. U.S. Forest Service Research & Development / National Interagency Fire Center, "Government spending on wildfire suppression," 2024. https://research.fs.usda.gov/srs/articles/government-spending-wildfire-suppression-rises-climate-change
19. U.S. Forest Service Research, "High-severity fire area increased tenfold, 1985–2022." https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/69806
20. U.S. Forest Service Research, "Prescribed fire accounts for more than half of annually burned area." https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/68408
21. Penn State Extension / Washington Forest Protection Association, "Forest Carbon Market Structures and Mechanisms" and "Navigating Forest Carbon Markets," 2024. https://extension.psu.edu/forest-carbon-market-structures-and-mechanisms
22. U.S. Forest Service, Reforestation Program and National Reforestation Strategy. https://www.fs.usda.gov/forestmanagement/vegetation-management/reforestation/index.shtml
23. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, "Cap Count for H-2B Nonimmigrants," and Federal Register, "FY2026 H-2B Supplemental Increase," 2026. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-2b-non-agricultural-workers/cap-count-for-h-2b-nonimmigrants
24. U.S. Department of Labor, Training and Employment Guidance Letter No. 27-06, H-2B forestry guidance. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/advisories/training-and-employment-guidance-letter-no-27-06
25. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Clean Water Act Section 402 — NPDES" (silvicultural exemption). https://www.epa.gov/cwa-404/clean-water-act-section-402-national-pollutant-discharge-elimination-system
26. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Agriculture and Air Quality" (prescribed-fire smoke guidance). https://www.epa.gov/agriculture/agriculture-and-air-quality
27. High Country News / Southern Poverty Law Center, "The changing politics of woods work" (forestry contractor wage litigation), 2017. https://www.hcn.org/issues/49-18/timber-how-the-outsourcing-of-forestry-jobs-seeps-into-our-public-lands-debates/
28. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Forest Management workforce and capacity review, GAO-26-107993, 2026. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107993
29. U.S. Forest Service Research, "Post-fire reforestation and natural regeneration failure." https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/67973
30. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Small Business Size Standards," 2023 (NAICS 115310: $11.5 million). https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
31. U.S. Forest Service Research, "UAS inventory trials — drone and airborne-laser tree counts." https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/58969
32. U.S. Forest Service, Cloud2Trees project (lidar and photogrammetry for forest inventory). https://research.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/projects/cloud2trees