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JILL NEMEC, FORESTER: My role in the DNR is very diverse.
Um, I am a Forest Ranger, as you can see by my uniform today.
Um, so in that capacity, I inform people about burning rules and regulations.
I help people prevent wildfires.
And then if we do have wildfires breakout, then I help extinguish them.
Uh, another part of my job is working with private landowners.
I do property walkthroughs with them to try to help them meet goals or objectives
that they have on their property.
A lot of people, you know, they might not want forestry as their primary
goal, but they might want something like wildlife or recreation or aesthetics
that forestry really can help them kinda tweak things on their property,
that- to help them meet that objective.
So another big part of what I do is the county forest liaison for Vilas county.
And throughout the state, the DNR has a partnerships with county
forests throughout the state.
There's 30 county forests.
So 30 county forest liaisons.
So it's a pretty unique position within the DNR.
And what we do is we help each county forest manage their lands.
So the DNR with that partnership provides both time assistance
and financial assistance.
So the time assistance comes from people like me doing things like timber
sales, tree planting, forest inventory.
Um, a wide variety of different projects, whatever the county really is looking for.
And if it's not something that I can directly help them with, like they have
a wildlife issue, they have a fisheries issue, then I can help connect them
with people within the DNR that can help them out better than I could.
And then another really cool thing that isn't really part of my job title,
but I still am pretty active in it is helping the local school forest
with their school forest property.
So, I mean, a lot of that is just educational events and being present when
they're doing things like planting trees.
Um, but the, I did develop a stewardship plan for them and they use that
stewardship plan and implemented a harvest and had a big educational
program and a Log a Load For Kids charity, charity harvest as a part of
that, which was really, really cool.
I really like to hike around, especially when I was younger and I lived in Montana.
I'd hike everywhere just to hike, just to get somewhere.
And I still love to do that, which is part of a good part of my job.
Right?
I get to hike around in the woods all day, but the older I've gotten,
the more interested I am in other things, just besides trees or besides
putting miles behind me in the woods.
So I've learned over time to just kind of slow down, look at things a little
bit more and just be really, really curious about the woods and what's in it.
And I have found that that has really led me to understand and appreciate how all
these plants and animals and fungi and all that good stuff interact with each other.
And I feel forestry is more than just trees.
It's a whole ecosystem management and I think it's a really cool
relationship to work with different biologists, ecologists, foresters.
It's a broad natural resources field.
And I think it's really cool that we all collaborate together to try
to get basically a better forest.
Natural resources is a very, very broad field and forestry, even,
you think forestry is trees, right?
It's not, it's a super broad field.
So I think there's a lot of room for people that have very diverse
interests, you don't have to want to be outside and hike around like me.
You could sit in an office and digitize stuff on an aerial
photo to help a forester on the ground, set up a timber sale.
My advice would be just be curious about whatever it is you're interested in.
I mean, there's probably a way that you can tie it into the field of
forestry or even natural resources.
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