---
title: "Range Manager"
description: "Research or study range land management practices to provide sustained production of forage, livestock, and wildlife."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/range-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Range Manager

**Category:** Life, Physical, and Social Science · **SOC code:** 19-1031 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 19-1031.02

Research or study range land management practices to provide sustained production of forage, livestock, and wildlife.

Also advertised as: Conservationist; Forest Range Program Manager; Land Management Supervisor; Natural Resource Manager; Natural Resource Specialist; Range Management Consultant; Range Management Specialist; Rangeland Management Specialist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $73,010 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $35.10/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $47,550 to $110,410, with the middle half between $57,700 and $91,560
- **Total US employment:** 25,950
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +5.3% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 2,100 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 47/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 25,950 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $47,550 |
| 25th | $57,700 |
| 50th (median) | $73,010 |
| 75th | $91,560 |
| 90th | $110,410 |
| Mean (average) | $77,130 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $99,400 | $90,445 | 110 |
| CO | $84,820 | $82,308 | 1,230 |
| MD | $83,290 | $79,355 | 470 |
| ID | $81,330 | $85,168 | 300 |
| WY | $81,310 | $87,722 | 150 |
| OR | $80,790 | $78,163 | 1,020 |
| LA | $80,190 | $90,911 | 190 |
| CA | $79,810 | $72,083 | 2,110 |
| WI | $79,540 | $84,532 | 970 |
| AK | $79,260 | $77,433 | 290 |
| UT | $78,850 | $79,756 | 410 |
| MA | $78,740 | $74,454 | 760 |
| WA | $78,450 | $73,309 | 1,270 |
| VA | $77,380 | $76,535 | 480 |
| ND | $77,280 | $86,871 | 340 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/range-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/range-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 27,700 in the 2025–2035 base year to 29,200 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 1,500 jobs, or +5.3%. Faster than average: 5.3% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 2,100 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 75.0% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 8.3% |
| Master's Degree | 8.3% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 4.2% |
| Doctoral Degree | 4.2% |

## What the work involves

- Study rangeland management practices and research range problems to provide sustained production of forage, livestock, and wildlife.
- Tailor conservation plans to landowners' goals, such as livestock support, wildlife, or recreation.
- Study grazing patterns to determine number and kind of livestock that can be most profitably grazed and to determine the best grazing seasons.
- Offer advice to rangeland users on water management, forage production methods, and control of brush.
- Manage forage resources through fire, herbicide use, or revegetation to maintain a sustainable yield from the land.
- Coordinate with federal land managers and other agencies and organizations to manage and protect rangelands.
- Measure and assess vegetation resources for biological assessment companies, environmental impact statements, and rangeland monitoring programs.
- Study forage plants and their growth requirements to determine varieties best suited to particular range.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Biology — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Geography — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Enterprising (E).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.76 |
| I — Investigative | 5.02 |
| E — Enterprising | 4.39 |
| C — Conventional | 3.68 |
| S — Social | 2.42 |
| A — Artistic | 1.47 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 86.4 |
| ESTJ | 76.6 |
| ISTP | 75.2 |
| INTJ | 72.2 |
| ESTP | 66.7 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Conservation Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/conservation-scientist) — median $73,010
- [Environmental Restoration Planner](https://nuecareer.com/careers/environmental-restoration-planner) — median $82,220
- [Forester](https://nuecareer.com/careers/forester) — median $76,400
- [Soil and Plant Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/soil-and-plant-scientist) — median $78,850
- [Industrial Ecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-ecologist) — median $82,220
- [Water Resource Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/water-resource-specialist) — median $167,220
- [Environmental Scientist and Specialist, Including Health](https://nuecareer.com/careers/environmental-scientist-and-specialist) — median $82,220
- [Wildlife Biologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/wildlife-biologist) — median $76,780
- [First-Line Supervisor of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-farming-fishing-and-forestry-workers) — median $59,320
- [Park Naturalist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/park-naturalist) — median $73,010

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/range-manager