Lead Botany Technician - Tahoe National Forest

Lead Botany Technician - Tahoe National Forest, Westzone

American Conservation Experience, a nonprofit Conservation Corps, in partnership with the US Forest Service, is seeking Lead Botany Technicians to contribute to botanical survey projects alongside Tahoe National Forest Staff

For more information about ACE, please visit our website.

April 6, 2026 (04/06/2026) with flexibility for later start date.

Fall 2026

* a 16-week minimum commitment is required *

Tahoe National Forest, Westzone (Nevada City, California)

The Tahoe National Forest is located in the northern Sierra Nevada (east of Sacramento) and extends from the foothills across the Sierra crest to the California state line. It includes over 850,000 acres of public land interspersed with 350,000 acres of private land in a checkerboard ownership pattern. Rivers, snow‑capped peaks and dense forests offer outstanding recreation year‑round. A complex set of ecosystems are found as the terrain ascends from 1,500 feet along the western boundary to over 9,000 feet along the crest.

The forest provides a variety of resources and opportunities and is managed by the Forest Service.

Nevada City is a vibrant town alongside Grass Valley, CA with excellent access to trails, ski resorts, and world class rafting and swimming holes. Nevada City has a flourishing arts scene, hosts excellent concerts and music festivals, and has many restaurants and shopping areas. The Sacramento metro area is within an hour's drive for urban amenities.

For more information about this area, please visit the Tahoe National Forest website.

The Lead Botany Technicians will plan, coordinate logistics, and train Botany Technicians in all activities related to conducting weed management and targeted botanical surveys for rare and invasive plants and the habitats. They will coordinate with the USFS Botanists in planning and strategizing data collection tasks. With the Botany Technicians, they will create reports summarizing field data for use in habitat and species condition analyses.

All technicians on the Botany crew will work both independently and as a team to coordinate work efforts, conduct botanical field surveys, summarize survey findings, manage field equipment, discuss technical problems encountered or anticipated during project work, and create a safe work culture.

This individual placement is meant to facilitate professional development and promotes exposure to land management agencies and networking with professionals. This could include gaining experience in different conservation fields and shadowing different work groups.

• Conduct floristic surveys and targeted surveys for rare and invasive plants within project areas, typically covering one to three thousand acres in a season.
• Collect survey and inventory data to determine species identity, population characteristics, environmental conditions and factors affecting the vigor and extent of the species and their habitat.
• Use botanical keys and field guides to identify plants encountered during surveys.
• Collect and maintain detailed documentation of field data.
• Compile and summarize data obtained from surveys, inventories, biological evaluations and monitoring, and produce reports that summarize findings, which are used in Forest Service Botanists' analysis of projects occurring on Forest Service lands.
• Use global positioning systems (GPS), aerial photographs, topographic maps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), or compass in navigation, and use computer systems and associated software for recording, organizing, storing, and summarizing data.
• Perform physical labor and daily hiking, often to remote locations in rugged terrain, sometimes under adverse weather conditions.
• Enter data and track data using MS Word, MS Excel, ArcGIS, ArcGIS Online, and USFS databases.

• Assist with a full range of technical assignments related to seasonal invasive plant management activity on US Forest Service lands.
• Assess invasive plant population parameters, including size, distribution, and…