Arborists care for individual trees while foresters manage tree populations. For example, a forester may be responsible for managing a forest or woodland to produce wood or other wood products. Arborists, like Mark Cicoria of Cicoria Tree and Crane Service, Inc., specialize in individual tree care, often in urban or suburban settings. Foresters use tree measurements, landowner goals, and knowledge of forests to develop plans to care for their forests over time.
And loggers are the boots on the ground that carry out the plan you and your ranger developed. They usually have to climb trees and tear them down in parts to avoid hitting power lines, buildings, and other obstacles. In short, arborists are responsible for preserving or eliminating unique trees, while foresters are employed to manage several trees. A forester's responsibilities are to cut down forests to harvest different timbers sent to manufacturers for timber production.
Instead, arborists are often employed to preserve or eliminate a unique tree that threatens residential or public property. I don't know how it is where you are, but in Massachusetts, forestry consultants hire people with no forestry experience. If that plan includes harvesting wood, your ranger will oversee the sale, which will help attract reputable buyers and ensure that the sales contract terms are met.
Urban forestry
is also a social science, in addition to incorporating arboriculture, and includes management at the landscape level, such as inventory of urban forests, valuation, planning, policy, etc.As a forestry specialist, I had a wildlife job for a season, which actually helped me get my next job. Arboriculture involves caring for individual trees, whereas urban forestry deals with forests as systems (groups of trees) in a developed environment. And my desire to be a consultant or county ranger is definitely an end goal, not something I think I can do reasonably well. To be clear, I haven't received any offers yet. Still, the trend is that utility arborist and forester stands are the only ones that reach me so far after starting the hunt in February, so I'm more likely to get an offer from them before a traditional forest post. I'm nervous about declining an offer.
I'm waiting for one I think I would prefer while my resume creates a vacuum after graduation with no relevant experience. My advice would be to keep a job in a closely related field or as a forestry technician and continue working on your degree in parallel. My dream currently is to be a forester, either consultant or county forester, but I am flexible for anything that involves some interesting forestry. When you move past individual trees and start dealing with acres of them, now the tree experts you should look for are foresters and loggers.
In the professional field of natural resources, no other group has the opportunity to cover more ground or see more trees with polite eyes than foresters. If you are in the U.S. In the US, I would recommend you seek FIA positions or state forester positions (i). In general, the attitude seems to be that moving from forest operations to the urban environment is easier than going the other way.
Although exhausting for the body, these positions and experiences are critical to your future success as a forester or arborist. All foresters should take every opportunity to inform and educate customers and voters about the period of high risk of infection from April 15 to July 15. If oak wilt is found in a forest, it is important to isolate all infected trees to prevent spreading to healthy trees nearby.