Like engineering and dentistry and other professions, forestry has opportunities for consultants, who sell advice or their services. Usually the consulting foresters are employed by landowners and industries for a short period and a specific purpose.
The number of consulting foresters is still small, but it is rapidly increasing. The Society of American Foresters estimates that 150 firms now sell professional advice or services and employ more than 200 foresters.
Forty years ago there were probably fewer than a dozen consulting foresters. Most of them did only one type of work—determining the volume of the timber on areas being traded or logged by wood-using industries. During the prosperous 1920's their number increased slowly; the depressed 1930's gave them a severe set-back, but they recovered in the late 1930's and after; as business increased, a remarkable pulpwood development started in the South and the war demanded more wood. Lately their practice has flourished with the expansion of industrial plants, the need for more forest products, and high prices for stumpage.
At the same time, the consultants are widening their field of activities. No longer do they confine themselves to timber cruising; they have branched out into many other aspects of forestry, and, as "Cap" Eldredge put it, "the forester is in a fair way of becoming a working member of the industrial family."
The skills they offer are in 21 fields of specialization, listed by the Society of American Foresters as arboriculture and tree preservation, cost and economic studies of the forest operations, forest and wood utilization, forest management and the silvicultural practices, forest protection from disease, forest protection from fire, forest protection from insects, forest taxation, game and wildlife management, logging engineering, market studies and promotion of trade (forest products), naval stores operations, the pulpwood operations, range management, surveying and mapping, timber valuation and appraisal, timber volume and quality estimates, planting of trees and reforestation (reproduction studies), preservation of wood, wood seasoning, and wood technology.
A list recently published by the Society showed that most of the consultants have seven specialties, the foremost of which are timber valuation and appraisal, forest management and silvicultural practice, and timber volume and quality estimates.
Some of the oldest consulting firms are in the Northeast; the largest ones probably are in the South and on the west coast. Most of the consultants work chiefly with the large landowners. Sometimes their services are brief consultations on specific problems, very often with the permanently employed foresters of the corporations; sometimes their work is the long-term management of forest properties. One consulting forester spends practically all his time locating sites for new industrial developments. Another concentrates on finding tropical forest products. Another specializes in appraising foreign timber investments.
Nearly all large-forest owners and industries employ consulting foresters. The usual fees vary from $20 to $200 a day. Many owners of small forests do not have enough work for consult ants; many cannot afford to pay a consultant's fee or are unwilling to pay fees large enough to attract consulting foresters. An obstacle to working with small ownerships is that the expense and time involved in travel are large in proportion to the services and consequently the fees that have to be charged. Few firms of consultants have yet been able to provide a service to the small landowners at a fee that the owners are willing to pay. But because three-fourths of all privately owned commercial-quality forest land is in holdings that average 62 acres, work with the small-forest owners probably offers the greatest future opportunities for consulting foresters.
Eventually, we hope, enough consulting foresters will be available in all regions to handle all private forestry jobs for which consultants are likely to be employed. It is the policy of public agencies to encourage and assist in the development of the consulting forestry work. They recommend consulting foresters to prospective clients, distribute lists of consultants, send them the results of research, and on special problems act as "consultants to the consultants." As it is, public agencies do much to help the owners of small forests by demonstrations of good forest management, technical services in localities where there are no consultants, assistance to operations in the mill and the forest, and by showing that forestry skills can improve woodlands.
At a meeting of the Forest Farmers Association in March 1948, in Jackson, Miss., Consulting Forester John F. Kellogg, who has successfully specialized in work for small-forest owners, made the following remark: "In my consulting work with the small landowners in northern Louisiana and southern Arkansas I have done very little in direct selling of forestry to prospective customers. Most of the landowners that have turned their timber over to me for management have been sold on forestry by some of the educational programs or agencies or individual foresters prior to requesting my services. I am providing them with the means of putting into action the forestry ideals and concepts on which they have been sold."
For anyone entering the profession of consulting forester, adequate business experience and good professional training are recommended. A graduate of a forestry school generally must work for someone else for a few years before he hangs out his shingle as a consulting forester. While getting experience, he probably will find that it pays to specialize.
The most promising field now for specialization is in managerial service to small landowners. A forestry consultant should choose his territory carefully with respect to possible clients, markets, and the timber-growing possibilities. Many consultants are contracting for the long-term management of small forest properties for a percentage of the forest yields—an arrangement that the absent owner usually prefers and the consultant likes because it gives him a steady income.
Another promising opportunity for forestry consultants is with forest-products industries. Most of the 50,000 forest-products industries through the United States are small. All need technical assistance to increase their efficiency and profits. Some foresters run a portable sawmill or a small pulpwood operation and are consultants for other small firms and landowners. Cost accounting and aerial photography are growing fields for consulting foresters.
As the value of professional advice proves itself financially and demonstrates that the best way to manage timber is to do it the "forestry" way, demands for consultants will expand further. With added demands will come new specialization and standards.