Professional Forester

Career Overview

A professional forester has earned a bachelor's degree from an accredited university and is usually licensed to practice forestry in one or more states. A forestry degree prepares the forester to be a generalist, with a broad knowledge of the many subjects and disciplines in the practice of the profession. Many foresters later choose specialized roles such as forestland manager, timber procurement and sales, logging supervision, timberland appraisal, land acquisition and sales, technical forestry, or forest policy and law. A forester must develop or possess good communication skills to work with a wide variety of people including landowners, managers, technicians, loggers, contractors, government officials, and the public to accomplish sustainability of all the economic and environmental goods and services that are produced from healthy forests.

Other job titles include: area forester, environmental protection forester, fire prevention forester, regional forester, resource forester, silviculturist, unit forester, urban forester.