Abilities required by professional foresters in practice

Abstract

To meet the changing educational needs of forestry practice, a clear understanding of what foresters and forest engineers do is required. This paper presents the results of a facilitated DACUM workshop in which 10 foresters and forest engineers from across Canada were asked to define the abilities required by foresters in practice. The DACUM process is a job analysis technique that identifies the tasks and duties performed by a competent practitioner. A consensus was reached by the participants on the following general areas of competence: Demonstrate a level of comfort in the woods; apply basic forest operational practices; demonstrate an understanding of economic and resource values; communicate; interact successfully with people; structure problem-solving and decision-making; supervise effectively; manage a working unit; demonstrate an understanding of forest policy and legislation and demonstrate a commitment to life-long learning. A series of analytical frameworks to evaluate the results are presented and the forestry community is asked to respond.