Service Forester Assistance for Forest Landowners

- Hi, Sanford Smith here from Penn State Cooperative Extension.

In many of the videos that I've produced, I often talk about service foresters and their role in helping private landowners manage their forests in Pennsylvania.

Well, today I have Rick Conrad with me, and he is a service forester.

And we're gonna just learn a little bit more about what service foresters can do for people who own forest land or other properties that they need advice about.

So, Rick, what can a service Forester do?

- So, Sandy, thank you.

So service foresters are available at no charge to the landowner to assist the landowner with managing their forest.

So, then that can mean a lot of different things because many landowners have different objectives for their forest.

So what usually happens is we will come out to your property, look at it with you, and give some overall observations and recommendations to the landowner.

But more importantly, try to connect that landowner to a private practitioner, oftentimes a consulting forester that will help them further meet their objectives.

- Okay. I imagine people call you and they have all kinds of forest land properties.

How does that vary?

- [Rick] Okay, so forest land can vary by the maturity of the trees, the size of the parcel, the past history of the forest often varies on every property.

So that's gonna, the past history's going to dictate future management.

- How does a person get ahold of their service Forester?

Are they in a kind of a directory somewhere?

Is it a district organization or are they by county?

- Every county is represented by a service forester and within the bureau of forestry there are 20 forest districts across the state.

So each district covers many counties, of course.

So if you know what forest district your property is in you can call that forest district office.

So for myself, that's the Moshannon state forest.

But if you don't know the district your property is in, you can just go on the internet and search Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Forestry, Service foresters, and a list will come up with service foresters by county with a phone number and an email address.

- Yeah, that's great.

So you can contact them by email.

And I also know that service foresters are very busy people.

They've got a lot of people they're working with.

Can they come running right out the next day or do they schedule it?

- Oftentimes service foresters have other duties on their state forest where they work.

So, that can vary by district.

So, oftentimes it's a few day period until we're able to get out to the property.

And also sometimes we like to gather some background information first on the property, like make some maps for the landowner and, find out, maybe look at those maps, find out some past history events that might help our observations once we get into the forest.

- yeah, that's great.

Forests aren't going anywhere fast.

It takes a long time for them to grow.

So if you're impatient, don't be, because it'll be there, and service foresters will be there to help you.

Thank you very much Rick, for joining me today.

- Well thank you Sandy. I appreciate that.

- And thank you folks for joining us.