High Plains residents can be grateful, for once, about our dearth of trees and lakes.
According to a new report by the U.S. Department of Labor, logging is far and away the most dangerous occupation in America. Fishing is the second most dangerous job.
However, as The Rural Blog reports, some common High Plains occupations did make the top ten. Rounding out the list were aircraft pilots, roofers, garbage collectors, steel workers, truck drivers, agricultural workers including farmers and ranchers, electrical repairers, and groundskeepers.
But logging is the uncontested winner of this grim contest. Logging was found to be responsible for 133 deaths per 100,000 workers. Fishing had less than half that number of deaths per hundred thousand.
Perhaps surprisingly, oil and gas work did not make the top ten most dangerous jobs. The number of oil-and-gas fatalities dropped 38 percent last year.