Managing America's 750 million acres of forest: growing and harvesting timber, keeping forests healthy, and fighting (and preventing) wildfires.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Fire Management Officer: Leads the wildfire program for a national forest or park: crews, budgets, prescribed burns, and big fire responses. Typical pay $110k.
Wildfire Scientist / Fire Behavior Analyst: Studies how wildfires start, spread, and affect ecosystems, and predicts what an active fire will do next. Typical pay $110k.
Forest Supervisor: Runs an entire national forest or ranger district, balancing logging, recreation, wildlife, grazing, and fire. Typical pay $125k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Forester: Manages forests for timber, wildlife, recreation, and health, planning what to cut, plant, and protect. Typical pay $71k.
Hotshot Crew Superintendent: Leads an elite 20-person 'hotshot' crew that hikes into the hardest parts of wildfires to cut firelines. Typical pay $95k.
Smokejumper: Parachutes out of airplanes into remote wilderness to put out wildfires before they grow. Typical pay $70k.
Procurement Forester / Timber Buyer: Buys standing timber from landowners for a sawmill or paper mill and coordinates the logging. Typical pay $68k.
Urban Forester: Manages all the trees in a city, planning plantings, removals, and tree-planting programs for shade and climate. Typical pay $72k.
Prescribed Burn Boss: Plans and leads controlled burns that clear dead brush and restore ecosystems, preventing worse wildfires later. Typical pay $65k.
Forest Entomologist / Pathologist: Protects forests from insects and diseases like bark beetles, emerald ash borer, and sudden oak death. Typical pay $99k.
Forestry Professor: Teaches forestry at a university and researches topics like wildfire, timber, and forest ecology. Typical pay $101k.
Silviculturist: Designs how a forest should be thinned, planted, and harvested to keep it healthy for decades. Typical pay $76k.
Logging Crew Supervisor: Leads a logging crew, planning how trees are cut and moved safely and efficiently. Typical pay $59k.
Timber Cruiser: Hikes through forests measuring trees to estimate how much timber a stand contains and what it is worth. Typical pay $55k.
Starter: fastest way in
Wildland Firefighter: Fights wildfires on hand crews, engine crews, or helicopter crews by cutting firelines and putting out hot spots. Typical pay $52k.
Forest Technician: Measures trees, marks timber, maps forests, and helps foresters with field data. Typical pay $50k.
Fire Lookout: Lives in a tiny tower on a mountaintop all summer, scanning for smoke and reporting new fires. Typical pay $38k.
Forest Fire Prevention Specialist: Works to stop wildfires before they start by enforcing fire rules, inspecting properties, and educating the public. Typical pay $50k.
Logging Equipment Operator: Runs huge machines that cut, drag, and load trees in timber harvests. Typical pay $50k.
Timber Faller: Cuts down large trees with a chainsaw in steep terrain where machines can't go. Typical pay $52k.
Log Scaler: Measures and grades logs at mills and log yards to figure out how much usable lumber each contains. Typical pay $46k.
Tree Planter / Forest Worker: Plants seedlings after harvests and fires, and does trail, thinning, and brush work in forests. Typical pay $37k.
Choker Setter: Wraps steel cables around fallen logs on steep slopes so they can be hauled up to the landing. Typical pay $51k.
Tree Seed & Cone Collector: Climbs trees or works seed orchards to collect cones and seeds for replanting forests. Typical pay $44k.
Pine Straw Baler: Rakes up fallen pine needles from southern pine forests and presses them into bales sold as garden mulch. Typical pay $32k.
Airtanker Base Crew Member: Mixes and pumps the red fire retardant into firefighting planes at airtanker bases, turning a big plane around in minutes during wildfires. Typical pay $42k.
Fire Effects Monitor: Measures weather, flame length and plant damage during planned burns and wildfires, and returns later to study how the land recovers. Typical pay $45k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.