The person who actually measures the forest: plots, plants, roads, cut blocks and regrowth.
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Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $69,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $47,000 at the lower end to about $93,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 3 years after high school, on the usual route.
$10,900 to $17,900 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a licence, certificate or registration in Alberta and British Columbia. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$69,000
Lower end
$47,000
Upper end
$93,000
Job Bank's national median for forestry technicians is $32.97 an hour, about $69,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower and upper ends ($22.50 and $44.71 an hour) are the bottom and top of the range for everyone in the group.
$39.43 an hour
The median in the Northwest Territories, the highest in Canada
Among the provinces, Nova Scotia is highest at $37.79, then Alberta at $36.20. Ontario's median is $35.38 and Saskatchewan's is the lowest, at $27.54. Many first jobs are seasonal contracts from spring to freeze-up.
Roughly, all in
$10,900 to $17,900
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a two year college diploma at about $4,000 a year in tuition and fees, plus about $2,900 for books, supplies and field camps, which is what Fleming College tells students to plan for. The high end is a pricier program, a co-op fee of about $560, and the optional tree marking exam at $400. Most programs include a paid co-op work term, so part of this comes back to you before you graduate.
Cheap and short compared with a degree, and the paid co-op term in most programs covers a chunk of it.
Camp room and board
Paid accommodation and meals on remote jobs, so your costs drop while you work.
Employment Insurance in the off season
Seasonal crews usually qualify for EI (Employment Insurance) over the winter.
Truck and gear provided
Standard in field roles.
Government pension
Provincial ministry and municipal forestry jobs come with a pension plan.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A two-year college diploma with a lot of time in the bush, then straight to work.
High school diploma
Grade 12
College-level English and math are the usual entry requirements. Fleming College asks for Grade 11 college math and Grade 12 college English.
Forestry technician diploma
2 years
Two years at a college such as Fleming, Sault, Confederation, Maritime College of Forest Technology or the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
Field camps and co-op
Inside the program
Programs build in field camps plus a paid work term. At Fleming the co-op is mandatory and paid.
First season on a crew
Year 1
Timber cruising, silviculture surveys, tree marking, road layout, planting inspection.
Specialize or register
2 to 5 years
Move into inventory, fire, harvest planning or nursery work. In British Columbia or Alberta, register as a forest technologist.
Math
You will calculate volumes, areas and sampling plots constantly.
Biology
Tree species, forest health and soils.
Geography
Maps, contours and navigation.
Computer courses
Mapping software and data collection on tablets.
Physical education
The job is walking rough ground all day with a pack.
British Columbia and Alberta register forest technologists, and you must be registered to practise forestry there (in Alberta, on public land), or work under a registrant's supervision. In British Columbia, registration means articling with a sponsor, education modules, a practice diary and a competency assessment. In the rest of Canada nobody licenses forestry technicians, and you can work with just the diploma.
Ontario
Fleming College in Lindsay, Sault College in Sault Ste. Marie, Confederation College in Thunder Bay.
British Columbia
British Columbia Institute of Technology, College of New Caledonia, Selkirk College.
Prairies
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Saskatchewan Polytechnic.
Atlantic Canada
Maritime College of Forest Technology in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Quebec trains forestry technicians in a 3 year college program after Secondary V, or in a shorter vocational diploma for field work, and both are taught in French.
Finish Secondary V
High school
The Forest Technology DEC (Diploma of College Studies) asks for no special high school courses beyond a regular diploma.
Forest Technology DEC (190.B0)
3 years
At a CEGEP (public college) in Baie-Comeau, Chicoutimi, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Gaspé, Rimouski, Sainte-Foy, or Shawinigan's centre in La Tuque.
Or the DEP in Forest Management (5306)
About 14 months
A DEP (Diploma of Vocational Studies) of 1,215 hours, at centres such as the École de foresterie de Duchesnay. You can start at 16 with Secondary IV language, second language and math.
Field certificates
As needed
Some jobs ask for tree marking training or a Quebec pesticide certificate, which is valid for 5 years.
The professional technologist title, if you want it
Optional
Joining the OTPQ (Ordre des technologues professionnels du Québec, the Quebec order of technologists) lets you use the title. You can do the work without it.
The Quebec government rates the outlook for forestry technologists and technicians as very good for 2025 to 2029, with about 2,000 jobs in the province in 2024. The median wage is $32.00 an hour, based on 2023 to 2025 data. 43% of the jobs are in forestry and logging and 31% in public administration.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Chainsaw operator certificate
Fleming College graduates who complete the felling course leave with a Workplace Safety North professional chainsaw operators certificate.
Tree marking certification
Required to mark trees for harvest in Ontario Crown forests. Fleming students can challenge the provincial exams for $400, then finish with on-the-job training.
Wildland fire training
Fire crews hire every spring, and fire season brings long hours and overtime.
Mapping and drone skills
Technicians who can build maps and fly survey drones stop being seasonal.
Driver's licence
Non-negotiable. Much of the job is driving gravel roads to the block.
Wilderness first aid
Required on most remote crews, a two to five day course.
All-terrain vehicle, snowmobile and boat experience
How you actually reach the work.
Bear awareness training
Standard for northern field crews.
Tree planting is the classic first summer. You are paid per tree and live in a camp, so what you earn depends on how fast you plant. It is brutal work and a lot of people quit in the first week, but foremen and crew bosses come out of the ranks and the experience makes hiring you as a technician easy. Many planting companies also run silviculture survey crews, which is the same season with less pain.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Truck leaves camp or town by 6am. You drive an hour of gravel road, then walk a line through the bush hitting sample plots: measuring tree diameters and heights, identifying species, counting regrowth, recording it all on a tablet. Lunch on a stump. Back out by mid afternoon, data uploaded, gear dried, plan tomorrow's block. In winter you may be on snowshoes marking trees, or in the office running numbers.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
In 2023, 563 million tree seedlings were planted on 400,000 hectares of provincial and territorial land. Technicians check that those blocks actually grow back.
Wildfires burned about 17.6 million hectares in Canada in 2023, a record. In 2024 the figure was 5.3 million. Fire season pulls many forestry technicians onto fire crews.
Canada's forest sector employed 194,040 people in 2024, from planting and surveying to mills.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Farming, forestry and fishing first, then the rest of the field. See every career in science and environment.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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