Forester Friday
Shawn Hilton is one of FORECON’s Staff Foresters and is based out of the Falconer, New York office. His responsibilities include providing services to private landowners and institutional forestland investors, managing crew assignments, and providing herbicide and invasive species control services.
Before coming to FORECON, Shawn graduated from Paul Smith’s College with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Forestry Operations. Shawn has been with us since 2010, starting out as a forest technician and working his way up “through the ranks” to a Staff Forester position and has become a critical part of our field staff and herbicide program.
Since his first year there have been very few large-scale projects that Shawn has not worked on. His experience and expertise on complicated inventory projects and existing knowledge of client needs make him the “go to” guy for questions that the field staff may have on specific inventory specifications. Shawn is also our longest tenured licensed pesticide applicator in New York, diligently keeping up on his licensing requirements including continuing education. He has worked on projects to suppress the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid (HWA), treatment of ash trees to slow the effects of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) and controlling a vast range of invasive and undesirable species.
Shawn leaves early in the morning for the field and is often one of the last to leave the office at night after he comes back to debrief and/or download the data he’s collected. He is very conscientious about his work, and diligently prepares for the current project at-hand so that complications are minimized in the field. When Shawn isn’t in the woods marking timber or doing inventory work, he can be found hunting whitetails, in his boat on Lake Erie fishing for walleye or on his annual tuna fishing trip in the Atlantic! His hobby of smoking the fish he catches is very much appreciated by those he shares it with!
We truly appreciate all the knowledge and hard work Shawn brings to the team here at FORECON. We are grateful to have Shawn involved in new inventory projects and throughout the herbicide season when we all undoubtedly have questions!
Should you have any questions about timber, timber inventories, forest management, invasive species control, or anything else forestry-related, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Falconer, NY office at (716) 664-5602. We’d be delighted to help.