Find Your Local DNRC Service Forester

Service Foresters are here to help!        

The DNRC has 16 Service Foresters located in various offices across Montana; they are available for free one-on-one consultations with private landowners.  A Service Forester is often the first contact a private landowner has with the DNRC, and acts as a liaison to individual programs and specialists within the DNRC's Forestry Assistance Bureau.

Service Foresters can provide assistance and expertise on a variety of topics, including:

Compliance with Montana’s forest practice laws and rules:

• Best Management Practices  (BMPs)
• Streamside Management Zones  (SMZs)
• Slash treatment and fire-hazard reduction
• Hazard Reduction Agreements  (HRAs)

Meeting landowners’ objectives:

• Develop forest stewardship or management plans.
• Identify appropriate cost-share grants and programs.
• Provide recommendations on sources of cost-share assistance.

Forest harvest and management:

• Timber sales:  Planning and carrying through to completion.
• Silvicultural systems:  Select a system suitable for the site, forest type, and objectives.
• Marketing:  Identifying markets for timber and non-timber forest products.
• Biomass utilization.
• Reforestation:  Site preparation, choosing appropriate species, ordering seedlings, and proper planting techniques.
• Silvicultural treatments:  Pruning and thinning (pre-commercial and commercial.)

Forest insects and diseases:

• Identification and management.
• Acquisition and use of bark beetle pheromones.

Forestry education and outreach:

• Classroom and field presentations to organizations, students, and the general public.
• Information and (or) specialist contacts for resource issues such as invasive weeds, range management, wildlife management, water, soils, etc.

Wildfire:

• Fire prevention and hazard reduction.
• Creation of a defensible space around homes and outbuildings.

Urban forestry:

• Urban forest assessments.
• Education and outreach.
• Arbor Day activities.