At the Finley Center: Supporting the Next Generation of Natural Resources Professionals

By Allyson Muth, Director, James C. Finley Center for Private Forests at Penn State

In May, six outstanding undergraduate students and recent graduates spent an intense week at Penn State preparing for a 10-week summer internship working with private consulting foresters.

During their training week, they visited wooded properties where they saw how different management practices were employed to achieve various goals. They learned about woodland owners and ways to build trust and good relationships. They worked their way through Audubon Mid-Atlantic's Endorsed Forester training, which trains foresters in managing for healthy forest ecosystems that provide high-quality habitat for priority bird species, and they learned about the Dynamic Forest Restoration Block program s habitat restoration efforts led by the Ruffed Grouse Society, Audubon Mid-Atlantic, the American Bird Conservancy, and agency partners. They spent an afternoon in the woods practicing hands-on vegetation control and learned about field safety.

These six students were the first cohort to take part in this internship opportunity to build the next generation of young professionals entering the private consulting forestry profession, thanks to a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's (NFWF) Central Appalachia Habitat Stewardship grant held by Audubon Mid-Atlantic (AMA) in partnership with the Ruffed Grouse Society (RGS) and the Finley Center.

As part of a larger grant to support bird habitat conservation at a scale that benefits priority forest birds and improves ecosystem services, the internship training and support help us cultivate future professionals who are better equipped to work with woodland owners to manage the resource. With fewer than 200 consulting and industry foresters statewide currently serving our landowner population of about 700,000 woodland owners (that's one forester for every 3,500 landowners!), there is a scarcity of assistance providers available to landowners wanting to manage their woods well. These internships give a chance to expose future foresters to consulting forestry as a career path.

During their 10-week paid internship, the students will experience the many aspects of consulting forestry, from restoring boundary lines and inventory cruises to forest vegetation management and designing silvicultural prescriptions for landowner values and forest condition, along with what it takes to run a successful consulting business.

Many consulting foresters in our state operate independently or as small businesses; there often are not resources to take on student interns. This grant covers the students' summer stipend and provides tools and training to help them be successful. The consulting foresters selected to participate in hosting an intern are enrolled in AMA's Endorsed Forester program and collaborate on management efforts occurring on dynamic forest restoration blocks. In addition to hosting an intern, their participation makes them eligible to apply for support of habitat restoration efforts on their clients’ properties.

For years, Pennsylvania’s forestry community has wrestled with how to best equip the next generation of professionals to meet ever-increasing challenges and help forest landowners care well for their woods. The idea for this internship program came out of the statewide Caring Well for Pennsylvania's Privately Owned Forests, convened by the Finley Center and active pre-COVID. The goal of that effort was to increase connection and collaboration across the forestry community and to improve the practice of forestry on private lands. One of the initiatives proposed by the Caring Well team was to ramp up cultivation of the next generation of professionals. To date, efforts have been good, but relatively small-scale. In 2023 and 2024, the PA DCNR Bureau of Forestry added internship opportunities for students to work with service foresters, and not just state land management foresters. In 2024 and 2025, the state's Hardwood Utilization Groups hosted interns, linking forest management to the forest industry.

Until this partnership, we hadn’t quite determined how best to make the consulting forester internship happen. We are so grateful to AMA and RGS for incorporating this into their grant proposal and to NFWF for funding it! And, we are pleased to report that this is not a "one and done" program. We have funding for another six to eight interns in 2027, with concrete plans for the program's inclusion, and potential broadening, in future grant applications.

Left to right: Student interns visited a regeneration harvest on the DuBois Water Authority property, practiced treating competitive forest vegetation using a backpack sprayer, and learned about bird-friendly forest management at Bald Eagle State Park as part of their training. Credit: Allyson Muth