In this Issue

[PFT Connects] [Working Forests+Wildlife] [Healthy Forests+Healthy Climate] [Forests Restoration+Energy] [Private Lands+Treasured Landscapes] [Resilient Forests+Resilient Funding] [Partners+Best Practices] [Regional Application+National Implication] [Financial Review]

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PFT Connects Forests+You

The more we do this work, the more we see that it is all connected: the people, the forests, our economy, and our well-being. It is our partnerships with you and the land that are building a new forest economy—grounded in conservation, rooted in stewardship, and branching out into new forest “services and products” from climate to water and wildlife.

Good conservation takes time. And, as they say, time is money. The kinds of lasting, large scale impact that PFT has takes many investments made over years—whether to knit together the patchwork of the Klamath-Cascade into one healthy whole or harness the climate-healing power of working forests.  2012 was a year where PFT made investments in future conservation successes that will benefit us all for decades to come.

Some of our work has both immediate gratification and long-term impact, like working forest conservation easements and their ongoing stewardship. Both our Campstool and Bear Creek projects are good examples of this. These help keep our water, wildlife, and climate healthy for many lifetimes, not just those of current landowners. Some of our efforts span decades, like our focus on harnessing the climate benefits of forests. The results have exponential payoff—a payoff that we are finally starting to see. It’s just the beginning of what’s possible. We love what we do and we know the work we’ve done is just a beginning.

Thanks to a strong balance sheet, we are able to stretch our commitments when the opportunities are great. But, for PFT to stay resilient and able to make these investments, we rely on you. Your support helps buy us the time and capacity we need to continue delivering the long-lasting conservation solutions PFT is known for. Your support leverages the hearts and minds of PFT staff, volunteers, and partners to yield huge outcomes for forests and climate, and ultimately the residents of our wonderful planet Earth. (There’s no place like it.)

With your investment in PFT’s innovation, the returns benefit everyone. On the following pages, we’ll show you the connections PFT is making with your support, how far we’ve come and what’s next.

Laurie A. Wayburn , President and Co-CEO
Constance Best,  Co-CEO
Andrea Tuttle, Board Chair

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Working Forests+Wildlife

Making Working Forests Work for Climate Change

Even if we stopped all fossil fuel emissions today, we still couldn’t hit California’s CO₂ targets for 2050 without forests. While power plants and gridlocked cars catch most of the public blame for climate change, most people overlook the simple fact that deforestation alone is responsible for over 30% of total CO₂ emissions to date. California is no exception, having lost almost 40% of its original forests to cities, agriculture, roads, and sprawl. Deforestation and forest degradation played a large part in our current climate conundrum—and healthy resilient forests will play a major role in getting us out.

Since PFT’s inception in 1993, we’ve promoted healthy forests for a healthy climate. We’ve helped bring scientists, landowners, and politicians together to craft practical policies that leverage forests and climate. California is the landmark state for economy wide climate policy, and launched its pioneering cap and trade program in 2012. PFT successfully advocated with key decision makers—legislators, the Air Resources Board, and the Department of Finance among them—that investment in forests was a legally appropriate use of AB 32 revenues, and made sure they were included in the draft Investment Plan for AB 32.

How was your investment in PFT leveraged?

• Protect the 13,000–acre headwaters of Bear Creek, a key source for the Fall River, working with Roseburg Resources to conserve their 8,230-acre Bear Creek Working Forest. Your donations and grants helped us leverage a $7.8 million state investment to connect this with other conserved landscapes, creating a permanent “super wild-way” between the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, a 11,500-acre late seral reserve, and these working forests.
• Expand scientific collaboration and practical implementation on the ground with a $200,000 Wildlife Conservation Society grant for climate adaptation science in the Klamath-Cascade. We’re applying our research to several wildlife adaptation pilot projects—enhancing wet meadows, restoring micro-habitats, and protecting other special habitats, like keeping downed logs in place for amphibians.
• Sign an agreement with Hancock Timber Resources to conserve over 18,000 acres along the McCloud River and significantly increase the connectivity of this extraordinarily important area for biodiversity within the Klamath-Cascade region. This project was one of President Obama’s top projects to receive federal funding through the Forest Legacy Program.

What’s next:

Auction revenues from AB 32 are predicted to yield up to 60–billion dollars by 2020. PFT is continuing the effort to ensure that forests get appropriate investment to keep our climate healthy.

We continue to work with the Air Resources Board to confirm the van Eck forest carbon accounting system as an early action offset project. When you support PFT’s climate work, you allow us to unlock investments for healthy forests that are orders-of-magnitude larger than anything ever before. Your support of PFT has more leverage now than ever as California and the rest of the world makes decisions about the role of forests in combating climate change.

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Healthy Forests+Healthy Climate

Making Working Forests Work for Climate Change

How was your investment in PFT leveraged?

•Forests are a specific sector for climate investment: AB1532 created process for investing the cap and trade auction funds.
•Forest carbon offsets are valuable and useful climate tool: PFT worked with our conservation allies to make sure that linking California’s cap and trade program to Quebec’s new program maintained the quality and integrity of forest offsets.
•Climate investment and watersheds do mix: by highlighting the value of investing in forested watershed conservation, we can store more carbon andkeep our drinking water pure. The same conservation investments and actions advance both goals, and help forests and wildlife adapt to a changing climate.

What’s next:

Auction revenues from AB 32 are predicted to yield up to 60–billion dollars by 2020. PFT is continuing the effort to ensure that forests get appropriate investment to keep our climate healthy.

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Forests Restoration+Energy

Clean, Green Forest Energy

Decades of fire suppression have left many of our forests in dire need of responsible restoration—thin spindly trees crowded together, competing for water, nutrients, and sunlight, threatened by pests and disease. These unnaturally dense forests are veritable tinderboxes loaded with fuel for forest fires, leading to polluted watersheds and degraded forests.

Small-scale biomass plants have the opportunity to change this equation. Forest restoration transforms such forests from climate liabilities to healthy, long-term, carbon-sequestering solutions. But, the resultant waste can’t just sit on the forest floor; small-scale plants which use this waste and are supported through Feed-in-tariffs from SB1122 are a key part of the answer. Done right over time, restored forests sequester more C02 and have lower fire intensity. On-the-ground jobs are created in the green energy sector, and everyone benefits from the advantages of healthy forests and a healthier climate.

In 2012, your investment in PFT:

•Ensured a future power market for small-scale biomass: PFT’s focus onSB1122 helped establish a feed-in-tariff for small-scale biomass energy. Utilities must now purchase at least 50 MW from 3 MW forest biomass energy plants, ensuring they are competitive with their large-scale counterparts.
•Promoted forest biomass’ inclusion in the Electric Program Investment Charge fund and acted as a formal Intervenor at California Energy Commission and Public Utilities Commissions processes to ensure the sustainability of efficient, restorative forest bio-energy.

What’s next:

PFT is demonstrating how small-scale bio-energy from forest restoration waste is viable, sustainable, and low-carbon option. We’re advocating for 3-5 small-scale pilot projects in Klamath-Cascade watershed, contributing to local economies and ensuring responsible forest restoration for the next 40 years.

We need your help to galvanize support with local influencers—conservative and liberal alike—and shape the policies that will form the framework for successful green forest energy projects.

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Private Lands+Treasured Landscapes

Protecting Special Places for All to Enjoy

Sometimes, when you’re knitting together conserved private landscapes, you find special places for everyone to share. These lands represent the “hole in the donut”—privately owned parcels surrounded by public lands of special significance. If developed, these “inholdings” increase fire risk and increase service costs to local governments. Permanently protecting these areas strengthens not only their own natural and recreational values, but also the values of nearby private landscapes.

On these rare occasions, PFT helps willing landowners who are interested in making their property part of a treasured public landscape. Some places like the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument (CSNM), are renowned for their biodiversity, while others, like Yosemite National Park are known for spectacular scenery and recreational value.

In 2012, your investment with PFT:

•Succeeded in the Campaign to Complete the Monument, working with willing sellers that wished to add to the CSNM in Oregon. This effort permanently protects 5,000 acres within the nation’s first globally recognized biodiversity monument, and strengthens working forest conservation in the Klamath-Cascade.
•Helped Introduce the Yosemite National Park Boundary Expansion Act (BLA) of 2012 (Costa, HR 5907), which proposed expanding the boundary of Yosemite to add back 1,600 acres in John Muir’s original vision. The BLA received broad bipartisan support and great visibility with 47 news outlets reporting.

What’s next:

PFT is working harder than ever to complete John Muir’s vision and build a Yosemite National Park shielded against further development. Now, in 2013 new Yosemite BLA bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate, and all momentum points towards a completed expansion in time for Yosemite’s 100th Anniversary in 2016.

Your support now goes further than ever before: with record public support, and increased attention to the park for its anniversary, there’s never been a better time to advocate for an expanded Yosemite. And when it happens, we hope you’ll be there to celebrate, discover, and explore a new gem in this treasured landscape.

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Resilient Forests+Resilient Funding

Making the Case for Long-Term Investment

Landowners need to make decisions for their forests that also make sense for their bottom line. That’s why our conservation work focuses on providing incentives to landowners to manage forests for the long term, safeguarding ecological values in the process. Whether for a specific easement that permanently conserves one forest, or for a program that provides the capital to protect many, we devote our best thinking, creativity and tenacity to finding the best ways to pay for these vital projects.

We look for—and work to create—multiple sources of funding that complement the current marketplace and match the benefits forests and their stewards provide: water, wildlife, healthy climate, biodiversity, and recreation. Funding to conserve any given forest landscape might come from a complex mosaic of federal, state, or local government agencies or programs; foundation grants, private landowners, and philanthropists.

Highlights of PFT’s funding efforts in 2012:

•Working forests: Received final approvals to fund the Campstool Ranch Working Forest Conservation Easement, the last large ranch in Calaveras County, permanently protecting 3–square miles of forest and ranch land for future generations.
•$3.1 Million in funding from the Wildlife Conservation Board and Sierra Nevada Conservancy, with a generous donation from the landowner made this project possible. This easement connects to 645 acres of Bureau of Land Management lands as a permanent bulwark against future development.
•Conserving forests as a climate solution: PFT helped ensure that funds generated by AB 32’s cap and trade program will be available for investing in forests. This new multi-billion dollar fund for reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be used to fund the conservation, restoration, and improvement of California’s forests.
•Making the most of federal monies for forest conservation by advocating for a more efficient and flexible federal Forest Legacy Program in the Farm Bill.
•Efficient and effective:Worked with CalFire and the legislature to improve the implementation of California’s Forest Legacy program.
•Forest energy: Promoted forest biomass’s inclusion in the new Electric Program Investment Charge fund (potentially $26-million over 3 years)
•Forest energy: to ensure market viability and processes for the sustainability of efficient, restorative forest bio-energy PFT engaged as a intervenor at California Energy Commission and Public Utilities Commission hearings.

What’s next:

How to pay for the conservation that forests deserve is a constant concern. Your donations, large and small, catalyze our efforts to leverage potentially billions of dollars to protect our forests, waterways, wildlife and climate. Breathing in a forest’s oxygen-rich air or seeing a Sand Hill Crane soar above a meadow isn’t half bad either!

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Partners+Best Practices

Convening, Collaborating, Connecting

Our work is all about listening and getting everyone’s needs on the table. PFT’s work connects conservatives and liberals, elected officials and entrepreneurs, scientists and foresters, public agencies and private landowners, families and adventurers.

In every case, PFT looks at both sides of each forest and climate issue to find a “radical middle” from which to offer innovative conservation solutions and incentives for working forests and private landowners. We lend our unbiased assistance on best practice documents that further the causes of working forest conservation, wildlife protection, climate adaptation, forest restoration energy, and healthy watersheds.

Examples—your support helped PFT:

•Achieve practical reforms for quality appraisals to fund conservation easements (CA Wildlife Conservation Board).
•Mitigate fire liability for private landowners, generate funding for forest restoration, and provide stable funding for review of forest management plans (CA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife)
•Develop practical incentives to manage critically needed habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl. (USFWS)
•Expand the forest carbon market nationally, working with Carbon Canopy
•Articulate the range of forest investments that would help achieve California’s climate goals. (Various state resource agencies)

Selected Partners and Clients:
American Forest Foundation
American Forests
American Rivers
Appalachian Mountain Club
CA Dept. of Fish & Wildlife
CalFire
California Forestry Assoc.
California Wildlife
Conservation Board
CalTrout
The Campbell Group, LLC
Carbon Canopy
Dogwood Alliance
Duke University School of Law
Environment California
Fred M. van Eck Forest
Foundation, LLC
George House (BLM, CSNM)
Hancock Timber Resource Group
J. Timothy Lane and
Campstool Ranch
The Lyme Timber Company
National Park Service
Northwest Biocarbon Initiative
Oregon State University
Pondosa Forest, LLC
River Exchange
Roseburg Resources Co.
Save the Redwoods League
Sierra Cascade Land Trust Council
Sierra Nevada Conservancy
Sustainable Forestry
Roundtable
The Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center
U.S Bureau of Land Management
USDA Forest Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
(Reg 5, 6)
World Resources Institute’
Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

Klamath-Cascade Advisory Council Members:
Larry Alexander, Northern CA Resource Center
Curt Babcock, CA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
Steve Bachmann, Shasta-Trinity National Forest
Stu Farber, W.M. Beaty & Associates
Mike De Lasaux, University of California Cooperative Extension
Phil Detrich, U.S .Fish and Wildlife Service (Ret.)
Jay Francis, Collins Pine Company
Nick Goulette, Watershed Research & Training Center
Melinda Graves, Natural Resources Conservation Service
Gary Hendrix, Phillips Bros. Mill
Mike Hupp, Consulting Forester
Bob Kingman, Sierra Nevada Conservancy
Rich Klug, Roseburg Resources Co.
Curtis Knight, California Trout
Don Koch, CA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife (Ret.)
Phil Nemir, Consulting Forester
Colleen O’Sullivan, Trinity County RCD
Laurie Tippin, USDA Forest Service – Region 5 (Ret.)

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Regional Application+National Implication

The Klamath-Cascade: A Living Laboratory Goes National

Everything we’ve learned about forests—all the science, research, tools, best practices, and policies—comes together in PFT’s living laboratory: the 10-million breathtaking acres surrounding Mt. Shasta.

We’ve spent twenty years developing incentives for landowners (like working forest conservation easements and carbon offset projects); advocating for forest investment; facilitating forest restoration and sustainable bio-energy; and promoting well-managed, resilient forests for a healthy climate. And it all comes together here, in the Klamath-Cascade, where a new forest economy means local jobs, clean water supplies, robust wildlife, and a healthy climate. Working with our K-C Council, a diverse group of stakeholders—public agencies, legislators, foresters, scientists and community development groups—PFT is building broad community engagement across the region.

Home to a floristic province with over 600 plant and animal species, California’s wood basket, a still-growing glacier, and endless recreation and adventure, the region presents a rare opportunity to grow resilient, well managed forests on a massive scale and set the tone for woodlands across the United States. If our forests are to survive against the demands of population growth, development, industrialization and climate change, we must do all we can to conserve forest landscapes, and we must do it now.

The vision of a new forest economy is becoming real—in 2012 PFT:

•Conserved over 8,230 acres of the Bear Creek Working Forest, helping to protect the McCloud watershed and over 50 miles of its rivers and tributaries, as well as over 230 jobs.
•Contributed to the Integrated Regional Watershed Management Plan for the upper Sacramento, McCloud, and Pit rivers to protect watershed function and health.
•Worked in partnership with the California Dept. of Fish & Wildlife to develop new sources of funding for the Mount Shasta Headwaters Conservation Area.
•Won a WCS Climate Adaptation Grant of $200,000 to put climate adaptation science into action conserving and connecting landscapes.
•Gained an option to conserve over 18,000 acres of the McCloud River Working Forest and significantly increase the health of the watershed.

What’s next:

Our vision for the Klamath-Cascade region will keep PFT working on behalf of forests and forest stewards for decades, and we want you standing beside us with every new milestone. We’ll work with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to develop new funding for this vital region, creating a model for other programs across the country. We’ll also focus on conserving the Hancock McCloud River Working Forest, developing climate adaptation strategies for the region, and advocating for forest investment of AB 32 auction revenues.

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Financial Review

On the previous pages, you seen some of the ways that PFT is connecting forests and people, conserving for a better future, cleaner water, and a healthier climate. Looking back we’re a little surprised that so much productivity can happen in 365 days with just 15 dedicated staff members. And we’re amazed by the collaboration, generosity, and support of the landowners, government agencies, foundations, stakeholders, volunteers and donors whose engagement with us makes our work possible.

Financial folks call that “leverage”. Not only does 90-cents of every dollar invested by our donors and partners gets put to work to achieve our program goals, but every cent is amplified through our collaborations for maximum effect.

Conservation takes time. And, as they say, time is money. The kind of lasting, large scale impact that PFT has takes many investments made over years—whether to knit together the patchwork of the Klamath-Cascade into one healthy, whole or to harness the climate-healing power of working forests. Your support buys us the time and capacity we need to continue delivering the long-lasting conservation solutions PFT is known for. With your investment in PFT’s innovation, the returns benefit everyone.

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Connect+Do More

Thanks to your help, we’ve directly conserved more than 75,000 acres to date, which safeguard our water, provide homes for wildlife, supply wood and jobs for local families, and will continue to remove CO₂ from our atmosphere for generations. Add all the conservation PFT has influenced, and the impact grows exponentially.

Each year we put boots on the ground in 30 working forests, collaborating with landowners to keep their forests healthy. There are as many ways to support us as there are ways that PFT connects forest and you.