Texas Forest Country

Timber is big business in the Lone Star State, no place more so than in East Texas and its 12 million forested acres.

The Timber Belt, which includes the Texas Forest Country, sprouted an industry with an economic impact calculated at $12 billion in 2007, according to a report by the Texas Forest Service. Factoring in the statewide industry, the dollar amount nearly triples to more than $33 billion.

“The employment factor – it’s major,” says Ron Hufford, executive vice president of the Texas Forestry Association. “This industry contributes a lot to the economic development and the growth of East Texas.”

Statewide, the forest sector generated 166,071 jobs in 2007, 78,358 of which were direct employees of the industry. Nearly 34 percent of direct jobs were in East Texas.

For every direct timber job, roughly 1.1 jobs are created outside the industry. Businesses far beyond the edge of the forest benefit from the impact of logging operations.

“It is a major impact on our economy,” Hufford says. “When a mill opens up, or when a mill has a presence in East Texas, that one mill affects the logging contractors, the land managers, the banks and the equipment dealers.”

That includes businesses such as Angelina Hardwood Sales in Lufkin, a third-generation family company that specializes in producing wooden floors for truck trailers, rail cars and military vehicles.

Timber is Texas’s seventh-heftiest agricultural commodity, generating more than $830 million in sales in 2007, which is significant given its concentration along the state’s eastern edge. Texas trees, which are mostly of the pine and hardwood varieties, are used to make everything from paper to utility poles.

Texas Forest Country timber owners are innovating their way to the cutting edge of the green effort. Woody biomass energy production facilities are on the horizon, and carbon sequestering is becoming a popular option among both forest owners and major corporations looking to offset their carbon footprint.

Trees store carbon naturally, and as companies seek to green up their images and habits, they are purchasing carbon storage (i.e. trees) to negate the carbon emissions produced by their operation. The result is a new stream of income for forest owners and carbon-neutral corporations.

“Forests have been providing a lot of benefits to society sort of for free for a long time, and landowners have been providing that for free,” says Burl Carraway, department head of sustainable forestry at the Texas Forest Service. “So now, if we can commoditize that, and put a dollar amount on it, I think it’s a great opportunity for landowners.”

Carraway notes that he’s proud of the forest industry’s heritage, and the need for 2x4s and paper isn’t going away anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for new applications of one of Texas’s greatest natural resources.

“I like the combination of traditional forestry with these new opportunities,” he says. “And sometimes they’re not mutually exclusive. I think it’s going to be possible to do both, and that is a very good thing.”