Name: Wendy Weisiger
Lead forester at the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests
How long have you been a forester? How did you get started in the field? I’ve always wanted to work outside. I decided to go to the University of New Hampshire to study natural resources of some sort. I was going to sign up for wildlife management classes, but my advisor suggested that UNH had a great forestry program, so I did that.
I’m glad I chose forestry over wildlife management, because now I get to do both!
What are the duties of a forester? The main focus of a forester is managing land and resources, but there’s a bit of people managing too. We’re the fourth-largest landowner in New Hampshire with over 52,000 acres on 172 properties. I’ve visited over 100 of them!
We manage timber, wildlife, water quality and recreation. Of course, the best part of the job is that I get to be outside a lot and have a positive impact on the environment and how people interact with it. I also get to do a lot of education, teaching people about forestry and timber harvesting.
What makes Concord’s forests different than others? New Hampshire is a small state, so the variability in ecosystems is minimal. The neatest thing about Concord is that it’s one of the largest cities in the state, but you don’t have to go very far to have a wilderness experience. Most cities in the U.S. aren’t like that.
If you could work in a forest anywhere in the world, where would you want to work? I’d love to go to those amazing places like New Zealand, Hawaii and Africa, but the great thing about New Hampshire is that we grow some of the finest timber in the world.
You can tell a tree’s age by cutting it open and counting the rings – does that work on people? If you can count the rings in their teeth.
If a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes.
How do you know? Because the owl told me?
If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? I’d be an aspen tree, because they sound so pretty in the wind. It’s one of my favorite trees.
What if you were a Subaru? I’d be a Forester, man!
Guilty pleasure? Chocolate (I shouldn’t say beer).