However, there is no guarantee these forests will surround us tomorrow. With today’s escalating population growth, urban sprawl and other development pressures, private forests are being broken up and converted to non-forest uses at increasing alarming rates. More than 1.5 million acres of private forest are being lost to shopping malls, subdivisions and other forms of development each year.

The Pacific Forest Trust is the only conservation group in the nation solely committed to alleviating the threat to the integrity and productivity of America’s private forests with a comprehensive strategy to:

Retain, Sustain and Gain

Since 1993, the Pacific Forest Trust has been working to preserve, enhance and restore America’s vast and vital private forests – and safeguard their many public benefits – through education, innovation and collaboration.

We help Retain our forest infrastructure by raising awareness of the threats to America’s private forests and by directly conserving critical forestlands in partnership with landowners and communities in California, Oregon and Washington. We lead the country in the use of working forest conservation easements that ensure productive forests stay working for us all. And we help protect the integrity of important public forests by conserving neighboring private lands threatened by development.

We help Sustain forests by employing state-of-the-art forest stewardship practices on the thousands of acres we manage in the Pacific West. We also promote exemplary forest management to forest owners, policy-makers and the public so people across the U.S. will better understand that forestry is key to ecosystem conservation.

We help both landowners and the public Gain from private forests by developing and promoting new forest eco-services. These forest eco-services serve as the basis for a sustainable business model that yields financial returns from forest management practices that enhance forest carbon stores, watershed quality and fish and wildlife habitat. Our leadership in this area has led to the creation of a first-in-the-nation California-based program that allows forest landowners to register and sell carbon credits generated by forest conservation and sustainable management.

The Pacific Forest Trust is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization.

Contact Us.

The Pacific Forest Trust is a public-benefit charitable organization. Your support is crucial to our ability to preserve productive forestlands.

Please make a tax-deductible donation to the Pacific Forest Trust.

Private, working forests like this mature stand of cedars provide immense public and private benefits, yet they are increasingly threatened.

The Pacific Forest Trust is a center for research, education and innovation in stewardship forestry, and is recognized nationally as an authority on the conservation of private, working forestlands. Photo by Marty Knapp.