With more than 12 million acres of commercial forest­land covering the Piney Woods region of Northeast Texas, it’s no surprise that the majority of commercial timber growing and wood processing in the state takes place here in the Ark-Tex region.

This lucrative industry brought Bill Ward to Texas in 1978, and timber sales for his company, Ward Timber, now run about $35 million a year.

“This is the biggest industry in east Texas,” says Ward, whose company – co-owned by John B. Jones – employs 110 people and has five locations in Northeast Texas.

Ward Timber primarily buys and sells timber and timberland in the four-state area: Northeast Texas, Southeast Oklahoma, Southwest Arkansas and Northwest Louisiana.

“It’s easily over a billion-dollar-a-year industry just in Northeast Texas. It’s huge,” he says. “If you took the tim­ber industry out, it would really knock the economy in the head around here.”

It’s been this way for decades, thanks to the abundance of hardwood trees, particularly pine; a climate well suited to their growth; and plenty of people ready and willing to process the bounty.

The global company International Paper is a major player in the industry here, with its Texarkana Mill in Domino spending an estimated $70 million a year on payroll. The company also pays $909,000 in annual sales taxes for the mill, further bolstering the region’s economy.

“Northeast Texas boasts many great resources,” says Amanda Black-Keeney, spokeswoman for International Paper’s Texarkana Mill. “Friendly, talented, caring people coupled with abundant working forestlands and adequate water resources made this the right choice for International Paper 35 years ago, and it certainly remains the right choice today.”

The Texarkana Mill produces coated paperboard for packaging, hot and cold drink cup stock and folding cartons.

Anthony Forest Products, headquar­tered in El Dorado, Ark., is another major, longtime company in the region, owning approximately 86,000 acres of timberland in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. It operates Southern pine lumber-producing mills in Urbana, Ark., and Atlanta, Texas, and wood chip mills in Plain Dealing, La., and Troup, Texas.

The biggest change to the industry through the years has been an increase in efficiency thanks to mechanization on the logging side, Ward says.

“Thirty years ago, if you had a log­ging job, you’d expect to produce 75 tons per week per man,” he says. “Today, with new equipment, you can produce 250 tons per week per man – and that’s a big difference.”

Management practices have changed for the better as well, he says, such as avoiding clear-cutting along streams to help preserve wildlife and prevent water pollution and erosion.

The biggest threat to the timber industry these days is the loss of timber-growing land — to urbanization, to the government for other uses such as res­ervoirs, and to private companies for oil and gas pipelines, Ward says.

Another challenge is the rising cost of fuel.

“I think it will continue to be a strong, viable industry,” he says. “I think one of the biggest changes we’ll see in the next 10 years will be more efficient use of our forest products. We’ll be selling limbs and pine needles to fuel biomass plants to generate electricity. We’re already seeing some of that.”