Dionte Berry
Features Editor
dberry11@murraystate.edu
Fresh from graduation, alumnus Nick Bohannon found himself taking on a job in the government with the U.S. Forest Service.
Bohannon graduated in May 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in conservation and wildlife biology law. He applied for this job in October 2019.
Bohannon is a part of the U.S. Forest Service Region 9 Timber Strike Team. He is stationed at the Shawnee National Forest near Murphysboro, Illinois, and a part of what he does is going through the forests looking for trees that would be good for timber.
“It’s interesting what we do,” Bohannon said. “We do timber sales for a lot of the Eastern region of the Forest Service, which encompasses from about Minnesota to Missouri, and all the way east up to Maine.”
Forests have timber extraction goals they have to meet, and it’s a part of Bohannon’s job to determine what trees are best to become timber.
“My team goes into forests and marks trees that need to be cut, need to be left and boundaries of the timber sales, and we also measure trees to get an estimation of the volume of timber,” Bohannon said.
When determining which trees should stay and which should go, Bohannon doesn’t just pick any trees, but picks trees that appear as though they may die soon or have irreversible damage.
“Rather than letting those trees go to waste, we want to use them to stimulate the economy a little bit while also meeting our goals we have for the piece of land,” Bohannon said. “We have a civil cultural forester who gives us a prescription for the land and it will have goals saying how dense the area should be, how many trees to take per acre and what types of trees to leave, so this is basically our guide.”
Each forest is addressed differently by the U.S. Forest Service. Bohannon said some are managed for certain wildlife species or tree species.
Bohannon’s team goes by the forest’s plans when determining trees for marking. From that point Bohannon said private logging companies bid on the timber and the government chooses what company gets to work on the land.
Trekking through forests to seek timber-worthy trees is only one part of the job.The other is traveling across parts of the eastern U.S. into various forests to make tree determinations. However, much of it has been put on hold.
“We haven’t been traveling much because of COVID-19, so we were stuck on the Shawnee National Forest which is our home unit,” Bohannon said. “However, last month I got to go to the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri and now I am in Indiana doing work at the Hoosier National Forest.”
With different forests Bohannon said he has to think on the fly with what he and his team does because each forest has a different market they are providing timber for.
Despite the hefty workload and the traveling, Bohannon enjoys the job and is happy he got the opportunity.
“It’s a fast-paced job,” Bohannon said. “We switch gears a lot, but it keeps things interesting. There is something new everyday.”
When Bohannon first set foot onto Murray State’s campus, he did not expect his life to take this route.
“In wildlife biology you don’t hear much about forestry, but at Murray State I learned a lot about how forestry management can really help ecosystems across the nation,” Bohannon said. “I thought that was really cool that someone somewhere got to make decisions that could benefit forests for years to come.”
Bohannon said he jumped on the opportunity early because he didn’t know how long the processing would take since he was applying for a government agency.
Once Bohannon got the job, he started right after he graduated, and he realized he did not know what he jumped into.
“I thought it was some sort of recreation job, I had absolutely no idea what this job was until I started,” Bohannon said. “They handed me all these forestry tools and I had no idea what I was doing, but I had the knowledge from Murray State and my team to guide me.”
Upon graduation, Bohannon knew he wanted to work for the Forest Service, but he did not know exactly what he wanted to do with the agency.
During his senior year, Bohannon applied to multiple places for work in preparation for his upcoming graduation, and as he was in the middle of an application he got a call from the U.S. Forest Service. From there, an interview was arranged. In January, he was notified he got the job.
“I was ecstatic to get a permanent job especially right before COVID-19,” Bohannon said.
Bohannon originally wanted to do law conservation law enforcement and the idea is still in the picture.
“I still want to do conservation law enforcement, but the vision has changed a little bit mainly because I just like working with these trees so much,” Bohannon said.
In his early college years, Bohannon had the idea of working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and he worked with them over the summer in 2018. He found that they were not the fit for him though, and he felt as though a wrench was thrown into his plans.
However, in the summer of 2019 he got a seasonal job with Forest Services in recreation, and Bohannon described it as “a less glamorous job.”
“We maintained trails, picked up trash and refilled toilet paper in the porta-potties, and they really pulled me with this job,” Bohannon said. “It seemed like family, even though I was the guy that was changing the toilet paper they still treated me the same as one the foresters that have been there for 30 years.”
After Bohannon found the agency he wanted to be a part of, the next move was for him to find the job he wanted.
Although Bohannon enjoys where he is right now, he sees himself possibly moving around within the U.S. Forest Service because he still wants to explore the law side.
I still have that law enforcement side driving me, but I want to be a timber sales administrator,” Bohannon said. “They are the people that make sure logging companies are holding up their end of the contract, rather than enforcing the law they are enforcing the contract.”
During his time as a Racer, Bohannon was exposed to the idea of forest work which influenced his choice of work.
“I took a class where we went to Land Between the Lakes and we were flipping logs looking for little salamanders and I thought it would be so cool to get to work at a place like this,” Bohannon said.
This idea was strengthened the more Bohannon learned in his courses concerning topics such as wildland fires, forestry management and recreation.
After graduating Bohannon is happy to see the path that his passion is taking him along and thinks it’s important for others to do the same.
Apply yourself to your passions and really follow what makes you happy,” Bohannon said. “I will never make the most money in the world working for the federal government, but I am happy every single day I go to work.”