John Hamil­ton was elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Texas Forestry Asso­ci­a­tion at the Annu­al Con­fer­ence in Nacog­doches in late Octo­ber. With over 25 years of expe­ri­ence in for­est man­age­ment, wood pro­cure­ment, and for­est tech­nol­o­gy, John will do well in lead­ing the Asso­ci­a­tion’s diverse mem­ber­ship through a time of eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal change.

John is Pres­i­dent of TTG Forestry Ser­vices, where he sup­ports the man­age­ment of BTG’s Tim­ber­land Invest­ment Group assets in the Unit­ed States. In this role, he over­sees prop­er­ty man­age­ment and tech­ni­cal ser­vices for approx­i­mate­ly 1.6 mil­lion acres across Texas and Louisiana, the Pacif­ic North­west in Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon, the south­east­ern states of Alaba­ma, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and Ten­nessee, and in Ohio and West Virginia. 

John has spent his entire life in East Texas. Hav­ing grown up in Jasper, he fin­ished high school not know­ing what he real­ly want­ed to do next. After going back and forth in con­ver­sa­tions with his par­ents, his dad final­ly sent him to see his good friend, Ron Gre­sham, a forester with Tem­ple-Inland whom John had known all his life. John spent some qual­i­ty time with Ron at his office in Jasper, and Ron gave him a heart­felt overview of the forestry profession. 

Their con­ver­sa­tion real­ly res­onat­ed with him and his love of the out­doors. John enrolled at Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty and earned a BS in Forestry with an empha­sis in for­est man­age­ment in 1998. He’s nev­er looked back. 

Through­out col­lege and for three years after grad­u­a­tion, John worked for Jack Van­de­grift, Integri­ty Man­age­ment Con­sult­ing in Jasper. In 2002, he began work­ing for Tem­ple-Inland in Sils­bee, con­duct­ing GIS and inven­to­ry for com­pa­ny lands. The com­pa­ny moved him to Diboll in 2006.

In 2007, Tem­ple-Inland was sold, but John stayed with the land base, work­ing for Camp­bell Group. He was in sil­vi­cul­ture and har­vest­ing, then they made him an Area Man­ag­er and sent him to Jasper, and he worked in the same office where he and Ron Gre­sham had talked all those years earlier. 

John took a dif­fer­ent turn in 2017, when Roy­OMartin hired him as the pro­cure­ment man­ag­er at its Cor­ri­g­an OSB mill. This was a new expe­ri­ence for John in the forestry realm, one that he great­ly ben­e­fit­ed from. ​“I loved the job, the com­pa­ny, and the peo­ple,” John said. ​“But at the end of the day, it’s always been about the land for me.” And in 2022, he joined TTG.

John and his wife, Chantelle, live in Hunt­ing­ton, where Chantelle teach­es. They have three daugh­ters. Emi­ly, a graph­ic design­er, is mar­ried and lives in Ver­mont. Erin teach­es first grade in Cor­ri­g­an. And Ella, 19, is cur­rent­ly enrolled in Angeli­na Col­lege. John is an avid fish­er­man and has learned to enjoy hik­ing, thanks to his old­est daugh­ter. He also owns a small tree farm, which he spends a lot of time on.

John’s deep under­stand­ing of both large-scale tim­ber­land man­age­ment and the prac­ti­cal chal­lenges fac­ing for­est landown­ers across Texas made him an out­stand­ing choice to lead this orga­ni­za­tion. His com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able forestry will serve TFA and its mem­bers excep­tion­al­ly well.