Jobs / Science and research / 19-1032.00
Foresters
Manage public and private forested lands for economic, recreational, and conservation purposes. May inventory the type, amount, and location of standing timber, appraise the timber's worth, negotiate the purchase, and draw up contracts for procurement. May determine how to conserve wildlife habitats, creek beds, water quality, and soil stability, and how best to comply with environmental regulations. May devise plans for planting and growing new trees, monitor trees for healthy growth, and determine optimal harvesting schedules.
- US jobs
- 10,430
- Median wage
- $76,400 a year
- Job family
- Science and research
Can agents do the work of foresters?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Science and research:
- Task levelPartialThin evidence. CORE-Bench asks agents to reproduce the results of published papers in computer science, social science, and medicine from the authors' code and data. Princeton's HAL team declared it solved in December 2025: Claude Code with Claude Opus 4.5 scored 95.5% after manual regrading. No benchmark in our collection tests new experiments or lab work.
- Project levelNot yetThin evidence. On PaperBench, where agents replicate machine learning papers from scratch, the best official result is 26.0% (o1, April 2025). On a small subset, ML PhDs scored 41.4% against o1's 26.6%. No newer official results exist, and no benchmark tests research projects in other sciences.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in science and research, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 95.5%Claude Code + Claude Opus 4.5 (after manual regrading) · 3 Dec 2025Solved
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Establish short- and long-term plans for management of forest lands and forest resources.
- Plan cutting programs and manage timber sales from harvested areas, assisting companies to achieve production goals.
- Determine methods of cutting and removing timber with minimum waste and environmental damage.
- Negotiate terms and conditions of agreements and contracts for forest harvesting, forest management and leasing of forest lands.
- Perform inspections of forests or forest nurseries.
- Monitor contract compliance and results of forestry activities to assure adherence to government regulations.
- Supervise activities of other forestry workers.
- Provide advice and recommendations, as a consultant on forestry issues, to private woodlot owners, firefighters, government agencies or to companies.
- Develop techniques for measuring and identifying trees.
- Map forest area soils and vegetation to estimate the amount of standing timber and future value and growth.
- Plan and supervise forestry projects, such as determining the type, number and placement of trees to be planted, managing tree nurseries, thinning forest and monitoring growth of new seedlings.
- Plan and direct forest surveys and related studies and prepare reports and recommendations.
Other job titles for this occupation (24)
Area Forester · District Forester · Environmental Protection Forester · Fire Prevention Forester · Forest Silviculturist · Procurement Forester · Resource Forester · Service Forester · Silviculturist · Urban Forester · Consulting Utility Forester · Extension Forester · Forest Ecologist · Forest Examiner · Forest Pathologist · Forestry Consultant · Forestry Scientist · Forestry Specialist · Land Management Forester · Operations Forester · Silviculture Forester · Timber Management Specialist · Transmission Forester · Utility Forester