KOCHI: It might not be the course for every Tom, Dick and Harry. But if adventure is in your blood and if you have a passion for all that is fresh and green, then this might just be what you are looking for.Forestry courses are going through a bumpy ride along the sidelines for more than a century now. One of the first to take the course from the state being the Prince of Nilambur. The Prince went all the way to Dehradun to study forestry so that he could manage his own forest. But today forestry is indeed much more than managing private lands. With everyone from politicos to corporate bigwigs burning the midnight oil brooding over forest management, the field has indeed claimed significance like never before.But the number of courses in forestry has not grown with the demand for professionals in the field. “There is an acute shortage of people with degrees in forestry. We appoint students from the agriculture and other sectors to meet the needs, since students with forestry degrees get better jobs within a couple of days of appointment,” said Deputy Conservator of Forests, Dr N C Induchoodan.The 13 agricultural universities in the country offer BSc and MSc degrees in Forestry. Each of them has about 20 students in a batch. The entrance examination for the BSc courses is held along with the common entrance for medical and engineering. 25 per cent of the seats of forest range officers are reserved for the students who come out of these courses, the basic salary for a range officer starting at Rs 20,000.Apart from this there are the more prestigious and traditional courses in Indian Forest Service (IFS), courses at the Indian Council for Forestry and Research (ICFRE) in Dehradun and the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal.The main difference between forestry courses and other courses in ecological conservation lies in the practical training given during the course. In fact, the BSc degree in forestry is one of the very few courses in which one’s physical fitness is tested at the time of entrance. It is this factor which gives students with degrees in forestry an edge over others.“They are given practical training right from the beginning. As such they are much more attuned to the job in forest areas than others,” said Induchoodan. Apart from direct employment in the forest department, degree holders in forestry are sought after for research projects to study the impact of various development projects by the government.Other posts where forest professionals are in demand, are that of plantation managers and estate managers.
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