When a dead limb or broken branch is hanging over a campsite and causing safety concerns, it must be removed. The USDA Forest Service often pays contractors to remove the branch or agency employees fell the entire tree. Now, arborist-style techniques are giving Forest Service managers a third option that’s more cost-effective and better for trees.

Tree climbing can meet a variety of forest and recreation goals including seed collection, wildlife surveys, and hazard limb removals.  

The Southern Region has a renowned tree-climbing tradition, yet most climbers use Swedish climbing ladders, or sectional aluminum ladders. These ladders are optimal for some types of work but have limitations for working out on limbs or in treetops.

Thus, a group of foresters, wildlife biologists, and forestry and recreation technicians took recent training at the Bent Creek Experimental Forest in North Carolina. The course was taught by Jimmy Swingle, a tree-climbing instructor from the Pacific Northwest Research Station.  

The nine tree-climbing candidates learned about the advantages and disadvantages of arborist-style techniques and discussed issues including emergency planning, communications, tree hazard assessment, equipment specifications, and knot tying.

Instructors guided their cadre of climbing candidates through a systematic hazard tree assessment, looking for broken branches, wasp nests, and other hazards including adjacent trees, wind, and pedestrians. After the discussions, practice, and a final equipment check, it was out the door and into the trees.

By the end of the workshop, new, excited climbers were now limb walking, changing climbing systems in the canopy, and pruning dead branches with handsaws.

Having on-staff tree climbers bolsters the Southern Region’s capacity for work in tree canopies. Workshop participants—now certified as Forest Service tree climbers—will support the agency mission in myriad ways, from setting high rigging blocks for trail and bridge construction projects to hazard limb removals around campsites affected by Hurricane Helene to cone collection for red spruce and shortleaf pine.

Learn more about the Forest Service National Tree Climbing Program.

If you would like to request tree climbing support, learn about upcoming tree climbing workshops, or have questions concerning the Southern Region program, please contact Preston Durham at william.durham@usda.gov.

Editor’s note: Preston Durham was selected as the USDA Forest Service tree climbing technical advisor to the Forest Service Southern Region in 2022. His day-to-day work at the Southern Research Station is with the FIA National Resource Use Monitoring team, which reports on roundwood exports and imports and timber production.