Program Specialist 2 - Unit Fire Management Officer

Job Description
- Program Specialist 2 - Unit Fire Management Officer )

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.

• 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 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.

Work Unit: The Kalispell Unit is responsible for Department of State Lands programs within the geographic area of central and southern Flathead County, Northern Lake County plus a small portion of eastern Lincoln County. The Unit conducts field activities for the Forestry and Lands Divisions, and is responsible for all day to day operations of the Department within that geographical area.

The Unit is responsible for directly providing wildland fire protection to 700,000 acres of Federal, State and private land. A major portion of this land area is residential urban interface which presents a complex fire situation. The Unit is also responsible for providing forest management assistance to private forest landowners and administering the logging slash hazard reduction protection of forest resources laws on private lands.

The Unit provides administration to 20-25% of the State's total work load of slash fire hazard reduction. The Unit regulates all commercial timber sales practices within the Stream side Management Zone (SMZ) on all Federal, State and private lands within the Flathead Lake Zone (FLZ) and the Polson Zone (POZ). The Unit administers 64,000 acres of State Trust lands. On these lands, the Unit is responsible for sale of approximately seven million board feet annually, Other Trust land management activities include timber stand improvement, logging debris disposal, administration of 276 leases and licenses, processing rights-of-way requests, road maintenance, and sand, gravel and other mineral leasing/licensing uses of the lands.

This position is responsible for planning, directing, and analyzing the fire-management programs and activities within the assigned geographic area; coordinating resources; and providing guidance to internal and external cooperators. This position is also assigned responsibility for supervising and training subordinate staff and other Unit employees in fire prevention, fire suppression, and readiness components of the Unit fire-management program and providing professional assistance in carrying out the Unit’s forest-management programs.

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

The Unit Fire Management Supervisor performs professional level administrative, educational, training, law enforcement and resource management duties. The incumbent plans, directs, and coordinates all aspects of the Unit's wildland fire management program.

County Planning

Cooperative relationships

The incumbent is responsible for administration of the Master Hazard Agreement (MHRA) portion of the Unit's Hazard Reduction Program and for administration of the Best Management Practices (BMP) and Stream side…