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In honor of Forest Products Week as proclaimed by Governor Evers, the DNR Forest Products Services team is pleased to bring you the following four articles. Join us this week (and every week) in celebrating the economic importance of forests and the forest industry in Wisconsin, the importance of forest products in our daily lives and the many people who help bring those products to us!
The people who make Wisconsin’s forest products industry function are vast and varied. It’s estimated that more than 123,000 jobs in the state are tied to the forest industry. From the foresters and woodland owners caring for the forest to the loggers and truckers getting the logs from the forest to the sawmills and pulp mills throughout the state to the workers creating finished wood and paper products, it takes a wealth of passionate people to produce the many forest products you depend on every day.
Larry Krueger, a co-owner and sawmill manager of Krueger Lumber, is one of those working in the heart of Wisconsin’s forest products industry – fitting, as Krueger said he was born into it.
“My father Herb Krueger started Krueger Lumber in 1969,” Krueger continued. “The more you see the beautiful, natural products from our forest, the more you grow to love and appreciate its beauty.”
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Would you be able to name all the wood products you use daily? Paper is the most obvious, but wood products are all around you. From the insulation in your walls to the gum you chew after lunch, wood and forest products are almost everywhere you look, and many of them originate right here in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s primary forest products industry consists of firms that process logs and pulpwood into wood and paper products. Examples include sawmills, plywood mills, veneer plants, pulp mills, firewood processors and companies that manufacture log cabins, smoking pellets and other similar products.
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The economic impact of Wisconsin’s forests cannot be understated.
The annual value of products from Wisconsin’s forest industry is over $24 billion, representing 2.3% of the state’s gross domestic product. Forest industries in Wisconsin employ around 58,000 individuals.
The economic influence of Wisconsin’s forest products industry extends to other sectors through inter-industry transactions and household spending. The forest products industry contributed an additional 66,000 jobs and $13.1 billion in output, bringing the total to over 123,000 jobs and $38 billion in production tied to the forest products sector. To help contextualize the scale of that impact, consider this: For every ten jobs in the forest products industry, 11 jobs were created in other areas of the economy.
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Wisconsin’s forests and forest products have a dual role in climate change. They are impacted by climate change, but also help mitigate its effects by storing carbon in wood products from sustainably harvested forests.
Sustainably managed forests in Wisconsin provide essential raw materials for more than 1,200 wood product companies and 280 logging businesses. Annual forest growth in the state significantly exceeds the volume harvested. In 2013, Wisconsin’s primary wood-using mills received 307 million cubic feet of industrial roundwood, while net growth reached 576 million cubic feet — an impressive 18 cubic feet of wood growing every second – and enough to fill Camp Randall Stadium roughly 108 time over.
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