Forester Duties & Responsibilities
The role and function of a Forester includes the following duties and responsibilities:
- Manage forest lands, natural resources, rangelands, and parks.
- Decide best and most efficient way to remove fallen timber.
- Design ways to manage forests that minimally impact environment and preserve land.
- Participate in forest-fire fighting techniques and advise those on suppression methods.
- Negotiate land-use contracts to harvest timber.
- Draw up plans to regenerate forested lands.
- Supervise tree harvests.
- Monitor the progress of different forests.
- Assess damage to trees and forest lands caused by fires and logging activities.
- Measure how quickly potential fires will spread.
- Determine a fire’s impact on a region’s environment.
- Communicate with firefighters and other forest workers.
- Devise methods to keep forests free from disease, pestilence, and wildfires.
- Direct the preparation of sites on which trees will be planted.
- Advise on the type, number, and placement of trees to be planted.
- Decide which trees to be harvested after they reach a certain height.
- Supervise forest and conservation workers and technicians.
- Evaluate data on forest and soil quality.
- Utilize different tools such as clinometers to measure the heights of trees, diameter tapes to measure a tree’s circumference, and increment borers and bark gauges to measure the growth of trees so that timber volumes can be computed and growth rates estimated.
Note that this is not an exhaustive list of Forester duties and responsibilities. Job functions for specific Forester roles may vary, depending on the industry and type of employer.