How to become Forest and Conservation Technician in 2024

Forest and Conservation Technician Provide technical assistance regarding the conservation of soil, water, forests, or related natural resources. May compile data pertaining to size, content, condition, and other characteristics of forest tracts under the direction of foresters, or train and lead forest workers in forest propagation and fire prevention and suppression. May assist conservation scientists in managing, improving, and protecting rangelands and wildlife habitats.

Forest and Conservation Technician is Also Know as

In different settings, Forest and Conservation Technician is titled as

  • Biological Science Aide
  • Forest Technician
  • Forestry Aide
  • Forestry Technician (Forestry Tech)
  • Resource Technician
  • Timber Appraiser

Education and Training of Forest and Conservation Technician

Forest and Conservation Technician is categorized in Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed

Experience Required for Forest and Conservation Technician

Previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is required for these occupations. For example, an electrician must have completed three or four years of apprenticeship or several years of vocational training, and often must have passed a licensing exam, in order to perform the job.

Education Required for Forest and Conservation Technician

Most occupations in this zone require training in vocational schools, related on-the-job experience, or an associate's degree.

Degrees Related to Forest and Conservation Technician

Training Required for Forest and Conservation Technician

Employees in these occupations usually need one or two years of training involving both on-the-job experience and informal training with experienced workers. A recognized apprenticeship program may be associated with these occupations.

Related Ocuupations

Some Ocuupations related to Forest and Conservation Technician in different industries are

What Do Forest and Conservation Technician do?

  • Train and lead forest and conservation workers in seasonal activities, such as planting tree seedlings, putting out forest fires, and maintaining recreational facilities.
  • Monitor activities of logging companies and contractors.
  • Select and mark trees for thinning or logging, drawing detailed plans that include access roads.
  • Thin and space trees and control weeds and undergrowth, using manual tools and chemicals, or supervise workers performing these tasks.
  • Manage forest protection activities, including fire control, fire crew training, and coordination of fire detection and public education programs.
  • Survey, measure, and map access roads and forest areas such as burns, cut-over areas, experimental plots, and timber sales sections.
  • Patrol park or forest areas to protect resources and prevent damage.
  • Provide information about, and enforce, regulations, such as those concerning environmental protection, resource utilization, fire safety, and accident prevention.
  • Keep records of the amount and condition of logs taken to mills.
  • Supervise forest nursery operations, timber harvesting, land use activities such as livestock grazing, and disease or insect control programs.
  • Issue fire permits, timber permits, and other forest use licenses.
  • Develop and maintain computer databases.
  • Measure distances, clean sightlines, and record data to help survey crews.
  • Plan and supervise construction of access routes and forest roads.
  • Provide forestry education and general information, advice, and recommendations to woodlot owners, community organizations, and the general public.
  • Perform reforestation or forest renewal, including nursery and silviculture operations, site preparation, seeding and tree planting programs, cone collection, and tree improvement.
  • Conduct laboratory or field experiments with plants, animals, insects, diseases, and soils.
  • Provide technical support to forestry research programs in areas such as tree improvement, seed orchard operations, insect and disease surveys, or experimental forestry and forest engineering research.
  • Inspect trees and collect samples of plants, seeds, foliage, bark, and roots to locate insect and disease damage.
  • Install gauges, stream flow recorders, and soil moisture measuring instruments, and collect and record data from them to assist with watershed analysis.
  • Map forest tract data using digital mapping systems.

Qualities of Good Forest and Conservation Technician

  • Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
  • Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
  • Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
  • Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
  • Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
  • Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
  • Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
  • Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
  • Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
  • Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
  • Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
  • Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
  • Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
  • Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
  • Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
  • Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
  • Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
  • Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
  • Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
  • Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
  • Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
  • Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
  • Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
  • Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
  • Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
  • Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
  • Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
  • Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
  • Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
  • Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
  • Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
  • Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
  • Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
  • Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
  • Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
  • Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
  • Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
  • Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
  • Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
  • Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
  • Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
  • Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
  • Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
  • Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
  • Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
  • Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
  • Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
  • Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
  • Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
  • Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
  • Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
  • Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.

Tools Used by Forest and Conservation Technician

  • Aerial bucket trucks
  • Airboats
  • All terrain vehicles ATV
  • Altimeters
  • Amphibious excavators
  • Aquatic weed harvesters
  • Axes
  • Backhoes
  • Basal area factor BAF prisms
  • Boats
  • Brush hooks
  • Brush trucks
  • Bulldozers
  • Calipers
  • Chain saws
  • Clearing hooks
  • Clinometers
  • Crown densitometers
  • Desktop computers
  • Diameter tapes
  • Dibblers
  • Digital cameras
  • Dump trucks
  • Electronic rain gauges ERR
  • Electroshocking boats
  • Excavators
  • Farm tractors
  • Fertilizer spreaders
  • Field data recorders
  • Field personal computers PC
  • Fire plows
  • Forestry rain gauges
  • Forklifts
  • Frame nets
  • Front end loaders
  • Geological compasses
  • Gill nets
  • Girdling tools
  • Global positioning system GPS data collectors
  • Global positioning system GPS receivers
  • Grass whips
  • Gunjets for pressurized sprayers
  • Handheld refractometers
  • Harrows
  • Hydraulic dredges
  • Hydraulic truck-mounted cranes
  • Hypsometers
  • Increment borers
  • Laser rangefinders
  • Laser surveying equipment
  • Laser tree measuring devices
  • Lawn mowers
  • Leaf area meter scanning instruments
  • Loggers' tapes
  • Macroalgae harvesters
  • Magnetic locators
  • Mantax computer tree calipers
  • McLeod tools
  • Measuring wheels
  • Metal detectors
  • Moisture meters
  • Notebook computers
  • Personal computers
  • pH meters
  • Pickup trucks
  • Planimeters
  • Planters
  • Plug spades
  • Pocket transits
  • Prisms
  • Pruning saws
  • Pulaski tools
  • Relaskops
  • Remote sensing equipment
  • Remote video cameras
  • Rubber-tired bulldozers
  • Seed drills
  • Seines
  • Shovels
  • Slurry buckets
  • Snowplows
  • Soil augers
  • Soil moisture meters
  • Soil probes
  • Sprayers
  • Stadia rods
  • Stream flow gauges
  • Survey levels
  • Survey transits
  • Tensiometers
  • Terrain torches
  • Theodolites
  • Total stations
  • Track bulldozers
  • Trail motorbikes
  • Trawls
  • Tree corers
  • Tree planter spades
  • Truck cranes
  • Truck-mounted water pumps
  • Trucks
  • Tugboats
  • Two way radios
  • Video editing equipment
  • Water level recorders
  • Water monitoring meters
  • Water monitoring samplers
  • Water samplers
  • Water trucks
  • Watermark soil moisture data collectors
  • Wedges
  • Wheeler pentaprism calipers
  • Wildland fire pumper trucks
  • Winch trucks
  • Winches

Technology Skills required for Forest and Conservation Technician

  • Allegro Landmark
  • Assisi Compiler
  • Assisi Forest
  • Assisi Inventory
  • Atterbury Consultants SuperAce
  • Autodesk AutoCAD LT
  • Ben Meadows Yeoman Expedition
  • Computer aided design CAD software
  • Computer graphics software
  • Corel Presentation
  • Database software
  • Desktop publishing software
  • ESRI ArcGIS software
  • ESRI ArcView
  • Facebook
  • Fire behavior modeling software
  • Forest EcoSurvey
  • Geographic information system GIS systems
  • Geomechanical design analysis GDA software
  • Haglof Sweden AB TCruise Forest Inventory
  • HARVEST
  • JRP Consulting Plant Wizard
  • JRP Consulting Survey Wizard
  • Leica Geosystems ERDAS IMAGINE
  • LJI Technologies Lumberjack
  • LoggerPC software
  • Microsoft Access
  • Microsoft Active Server Pages ASP
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Office software
  • Microsoft Outlook
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Microsoft Word
  • PhoenixPRO Forest Activity Tracking
  • Photogrammetric software
  • Remote sensing software
  • RockWare ArcMap
  • Spreadsheet software
  • Traverse PC
  • USDA Forest Vegetation Simulator FVS
  • Web browser software
  • Word processing software