Casey Sappier: Planting the future forest

Casey Sappier can’t give a number for just how many trees she’s planted in her 10 years as a tree planter. She stopped counting after one million. 

Now a project manager with Irving Woodlands, Casey has turned a passion into a career. She started tree planting in 2016, a job that took her from New Brunswick to western Canada. 

In 2024, she joined The Tree Growing Company with J.D. Irving, Limited, spending her summers planting while attending the University of New Brunswick for the rest of the year. In spring 2026, Casey graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Forestry and was hired full-time. 

For Casey, tree planting is an opportunity to contribute to the legacy of securing a working forest for future generations. It’s a legacy built on work requiring physical and mental endurance. During the 2025 season, Casey was part of a team of 149 planters who planted 28.9 million trees. Each day, each tree planter plants an average of 2,000 trees through all kinds of terrain and weather conditions. 

“You overcome a lot, tree planting. You’re in the thick of it all, day in, day out, and you’re doing manual labour,” Casey said. 

It’s also rewarding. 

“You’re able to say, ‘I planted 200,000 trees this summer.’ Not a lot of people can say that.” 

For Casey, tree planting is also about being a part of something bigger: By growing the future forest, tree planters help ensure the working forest continues to work for jobs, for communities and local economies for years to come. 

"Planting trees is how we secure the wood supply and wood production into the future, which allows us to maintain the working forest and secure jobs,” Casey said. 

"It is important to plant trees to be a sustainable company. The trees we plant today are the wood to be harvested in the future."