Can an Arborist be classified as a forester?

[Marula]

As the title says, can we make a cross over if we wanted to without any additional training?

[Sam Thompson]

How do you mean? In skills, yes and no. Job title etc. I suppose so.

[Rupe]

Imagine two circles that represent the skills required for the two jobs.

 

I would say that those circles overlap by 25%. i.e. 25 of arb work is the same as 25% or forestry work.

[Rupe]

And the other 75% of each is like chalk and cheese.

[Andy Collins]

I think Rupes about right, there is a cross over point. I think many in forestry and woodland management could make the transition to Arb quite easily, but few in Arb could make the transition the other way. The reason, many arbs are just too precious, too shiny shiny, and don't want to hurt the trees....man (I've actually heard this from an Arb once!!) Trees are a commodity for man to earn a living from, however we dress it up, and if we are to survive as an industry we have to see this, otherwise we'll all become volunteers, doing it for nowt.

[Chris Sheppard]

As above, there are some similarities but not as much as a lot of people think.

 

Yes, they both involve chainsaws and trees and there are some activities that are a bit of a cross over, but on the whole they are two completely different activities.

 

There's plenty of companies out there that do both though successfully.

 

Generally though (not always beforee any one starts ), someone with a purely tree suregery type background may be quite slow to start with in production forestry, making themselves a lot of extra work and someonewith a purely commercial forestry background may be a bit rough for non climbing tree surgery work.

 

From my experiences, Tree surgery pays better money for less effort than forestry, but forestry is less stressful.

 

There's plenty of people out there that like the idea of forestry but think they can earn Arb money at it. Most soon realise setting chokers all day or running 8-10 tanks through a saw shortwooding and stacking isn't as glamorous as it sounds

 

EDIT: What Andy said

[swinny]

I've done both arb and forestry.

 

When i say forestry i mean, felling, brashing, cutting to size, stacking for each product.

 

Planting programs, woodland thinning etc....

 

and yes, 8-10 tanks a day . it feels like a nice break when the saw runs out of fuel

[slack ma girdle]

Forestry and arb work require a different mind set. My work is about 50/50 forestry/arb, and it normally takes a day or two to switch between the two.

I get more job satifaction from forestry, but i make more money from arb work.

 

Pays your money and takes your choice.

Edited May 7, 2012 by slack ma girdle
spelling as usual

[Sam Thompson]

As said above, lots of fuel, sharpening a chain becomes a joy! Also, bit's you didn't know you had will hurt for a while till you get used to it. And a bit more after that.

[arbwork]

As the title says, can we make a cross over if we wanted to without any additional training?

 

no, with training yes