Forest Flash: Striking while the climate is hot; investing in fire resilience; stopping easement fraud

In Pacific Forest Trust’s e-newsletter, Forest Flash, we send you the most recent PFT news and updates on forests, clean water, climate, and wildlife, no more than once or twice a month. Subscribe here.

Protecting our climate for future generations

An estimated 4,000,000 people around the world have already participated in a week-long climate strike that started Friday, and the UN Climate Action Summit began today. Only by acting today can we avert climate disasters globally and here at home—and conserving forests is an essential part of that solution.

In California, PFT has been working closely with the California Air Resources Board (ARB) as it has turned its attention to the major role of land conservation and stewardship in both mitigation and adaptation in climate change. As Mary Nichols, ARB Chair, noted this past November, “we must be more active in protecting our natural and working lands as they become an increasingly important part of our climate change strategy.”

Alongside the ARB and multiple stakeholders, PFT is advancing a plan to transform how we manage land for its climate benefits, building on the workshop where we presented an outline of how ARB and the state could significantly ramp up actions to manage for climate resilient and carbon rich landscapes. Incentivizing landowners to make the move to climate-friendly management is one such approach. These include rewarding landowners for enhancing sequestration, protecting the land base that is so vital for climate adaptation (as well as the production of water, food, and fiber), and promoting climate-friendly land management practices through market mechanisms. Read PFT’s recommendations to the California ARB here.

In Oregon, PFT is working with an array of partners to enhance landowners and rural consituents’ engagement in climate policy for the next legislative session. Oregon’s lands and landowners have a vital role to play in promoting adaptation and in solving the climate crisis. Equally, by integrating land management outcomes into climate policy, we can build a new, sustainable resource economy, and build climate resilient communities. We will continue to work with our legislative and community partners to pass climate legislation that protects natural and working lands and all those who depend on them. In August, we hosted a celebratory event in Portland to honor Senator Michael Dembrow and Representative Ken Helm with our Outside-the-Box awards: watch excerpts of their remarks here. Both were appreciative of the support and our engagement in climate policy in Oregon; they and other Oregon lawmakers are committed to passing climate policy in 2020.

Subpoenas issued for investigation of easement fraud

Conservation easements are an essential tool for PFT; they provide private landowners a voluntary means to permanently conserve their forests for a variety of public benefits while keeping them in private ownership and productive forestry. Nationwide, more than 27 million acres have been conserved nationwide using conservation easements. Some bad actors use them for illegitimate tax gains through syndicated conservation easement transactions (aka “syndication”); these transactions game the system with fraudulent appraisals. We applaud Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) for their action last week issuing subpoenas in their ongoing bipartisan probe of syndication. Senators Grassley and Wyden issued this joint statement: “As we’ve both said all along, conservation easements have very legitimate purposes. We need to protect those purposes and protect the American taxpayer.”

You can take action to help tighten this loophole by sending a letter to your Congressional Representative and your Senators, urging them to support the Charitable Conservation Easement Program Integrity Act. Send your legislators a message today.

Developing a response to wildfire in Oregon

Since January, when Oregon Governor Kate Brown created the Governor’s Council on Wildfire Response, PFT has been an active participant in two of its committees, those on Suppression and Mitigation. The meeting of the Council on Wildfire Response to be held this Thursday is scheduled to be its final meeting. PFT advocates for strategic, climate smart fire management, incorporating both prescribed burning and managed natural fires where these can be done safely.

The Mitigation Committee is developing technical recommendations for implementation; it is essential they be rooted in the best available science. Having invested the considerable time and effort required to understand these issues, the Mitigation Committee is now poised to answer the harder question of how to make decisions with that data.

The committees recognize that funding for wildfire response is currently unsustainable. It is also insufficient for future fire management, which many estimate will be more intense. The Council’s final recommendations will be critical to developing support for funding the needed work on the ground. Oregon legislator Pam Marsh, a member of the Council, recently noted that she is “advocating for significant funding for the re-establishment of forest resilience. We can and will continue to suppress fire, but it makes a lot more sense to invest in prevention efforts, particularly in our forest interface, that will help keep us safe.”

PFT is recommending the committees continue to meet to complete their work and that the Council’s Financing Committee identify new and equitable approaches to funding wildfire response for the state. This will take ongoing commitment from the Governor and the Council as well as outreach and education of the general public. PFT will continue to work closely with leaders and coalition partners in Oregon to advance the state’s response to catastrophic wildfires. Read PFT’s public comments submitted September 26.