Management Forester - Forester

Position Title:

Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation's mission is to help ensure that Montana's land and water resources provide benefits for present and future generations.

The DNRC believes employees are their most important asset. The DNRC empowers employees to exercise professional judgment in carrying out their duties. Employees are provided with the training and tools necessary to achieve the mission. Both team effort and individual employee expertise are supported and sustained.

Core Values:

The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation’s Forestry and Trust Land Division recognizes that building a collaborative, professional, and inclusive work environment is critical to fulfilling our mission of managing, protecting, and promoting stewardship of Montana’s forests and lands for the benefit of current and future generations and our trust beneficiaries. We hold ourselves to these high standards as we are accountable to the people of Montana.

• We value and respect each other.
• We create collaborative work environments.
• We build and maintain strong relationships.
• We celebrate our successes and take pride in our work

The mission of the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) is to ensure that State and private lands and water resources provide benefits for present and future generations.

These positions perform advanced professional forest management activities under the general supervision of the Unit Forest Management Supervisor. The incumbent independently plans, coordinates, and implements projects necessary to sell timber or related products from trust lands to provide income to the various trusts. These projects are complex and must be designed on a case-by-case basis to conform to numerous constraints and respond to multiple issues.

Each project must be analyzed under Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) rules and will require the preparation of document(s) disclosing the adequate level of analysis for each project and may require preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement. This position would serve as the Project Leader for preparation of complex, large-volume forest product sales, timber permits, and other forest product sales.

These job functions are the essential duties of the position and are not inclusive of all the duties that may be assigned to the incumbent.

Independently plan, coordinate and evaluate activities on state endowment trust lands and other state and federal lands to maximize net revenue, to provide for the sustainable use of the land and associated resources, and to ensure adherence to state and federal laws and regulations.

• Coordinate and perform inventory monitoring to identify and prioritize timber sales and maintain Trust Land databases by extracting reports, performing GIS analysis, and conducting fieldwork to verify and update records.
• Implement timber sales by serving as Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) project leader (documentation, public comment, assessment) and negotiating and administering contracts.
• Analyze data to develop permits, resource protection plans, resource improvement projects, or implement compliance actions.
• Establish project boundaries, negotiate access easements.
• Design specifications for aerial and/or ground-based logging systems.
• Design /maintain road systems, stream crossings and bridges or reconstruction specifications for state land and or/adjacent ownership.
• Supervise implementation of timber-volume cruise designs and marking with seasonal forestry technicians and supervise and participate in other sale layout activities.
• Implement the habitat conservation plan and ensure compliance with silvicultural prescriptions.
• Inventory and monitor land resources to assess conditions, trends and concerns, and complete statistical analyses, technical research, and financial analyses to determine the highest returns.
• Prepare technical written reports concerning the impact of projects and prepare all sale-package documents for Land Office and Forest Management Bureau review…