Creating the Future of 4-H and Forestry

Ashley Early
Forester

I am a Forester with the Bureau of Forestry in the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. I work in the Tioga State Forest, which is located in North Central Pennsylvania. I am a management forester, which means that my primary job duties include timber management such as laying out, marking, and administering timber sales, laying out herbicide blocks in preparation for future timber sales, and conducting landscape exams where I visit each stand that I manage and assess the health, regeneration, and potential for future work in the stand. Some of my other job duties include fire suppression and our district safety program.

I am only starting to become involved in the 4-H program in Tioga County, but I help out with the PA 4-H Forestry Invitational and was an assistant coach for the 2009 Pennsylvania Team at the National Competition.

I competed in the National 4-H Forestry Invitational in 2001 with the Pennsylvania Team. I enjoyed the competition not only for what I learned but also for the other people who I met there. It was a chance to meet up and mingle with other people my age who grew up in other places and other cultures.

This event was instrumental in the decision that brought me to where I am now. I learned many things while I was there, and those things really helped me when I got to Penn State, where I majored in Forest Science, Forest Management Option. One of the areas of the competition that helped me the most was Tree ID. When I took Dendrology, I was expected to learn roughly 150 species of trees, shrubs, and vines. Many of the trees were also on the list for the competition, so I was already very familiar with them, enabling me to spend more time learning the latin names since I was already decent with their identification and common names. Every single aspect of this competition was expanded upon in my education, and I use every one of those aspects in my job from day to day.