FOREST FLASH

Summer Double – August #2

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. Subscribe here.

Fighting Fire with Fire on McCloud Soda Springs

Wildlife Conservation Board grants $1.8M to advance large-scale ecologic restoration

On August 24th, California’s Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) awarded PFT a major grant of $1.8 million for restoration of fire resilience and habitat values on our McCloud Soda Springs Working Forest! This 1350-acre forest borders the historic mill town of McCloud in Siskiyou County, California. It is home to a wide variety of habitats: productive conifer forests, wet meadows, fish-bearing streams, beaver ponds, and rare oak stands. The property’s water-rich and varied landscape provides homes for hundreds of species and will be a likely destination for many animals seeking refuge from climate change. But its many conservation values have been impacted by the cumulative effects of intense drought, simplification from intensive forest management, climate change and a century of fire suppression. WCB funding will allow us to build on prior forest restoration and thinning work and prepare for a prescribed burn.

In addition, this will help restore a healthier, more biodiverse forest overall, improving health, productivity, and resiliency. One key element of that is the addition of charcoal to the soils—an important ingredient for both retaining soil moisture and building back soil carbon. Our reintroduction of a more natural fire regime will provide the additional benefit of improved wetland function, and therefore increased water storage. The property’s many springs and wetlands feed cooler, clear water into Squaw Creek, a key tributary to the McCloud River. We can’t wait to share images and stories from this initial burn!

Expanding Impact in Southern Oregon

Additional funding allows PFT to hire for new position at the Mt. Ashland Demonstration Forest

In other good news, PFT has just been awarded a three-year grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust to support a new staff position focused on the stewardship of our Mt. Ashland Demonstration Forest and associated outreach. Our goal is to share and leverage what we learn from our work in restoring and managing the forest, with students, landowners, NGOs, community members, and other stakeholders.

The Mt. Ashland Demonstration Forest consists of 1,130 acres of conifer forest interspersed with streams and wet meadows, located on the north side of Mt. Ashland. PFT has conserved many thousands of acres in this highly biodiverse, southern Oregon region, both through additions to the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument and with Working Forest Conservation Easements. This is our first directly owned forest in the region.

When we first began our efforts to acquire the Demonstration Forest in 2019, we envisioned it as both a crucial connector of protected forests along the Siskiyou Crest and as an innovative opportunity to lead by conservation-based example, helping to improve the fire safety and climate resilience of this extraordinary and diverse forest type. Now, with this Murdock Trust funding, we can turn our dreams into reality! We are enormously grateful to the Trust for supporting this work!

We are seeking to match a generous $10,000 donation to help support work on the Mt. Ashland Forest. Help us meet the challenge and donate here!

To meet its ambitious climate goals, California is taking a fresh look at what can be achieved through new approaches for the natural and working lands (NWL) sector. AB1757 is a first-in-the-nation effort to establish NWL-wide implementation targets. California’s consideration of this sector is crucial, as forest loss and degradation are the second largest source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions globally.

On August 23rd, PFT President Laurie Wayburn headed to Sacramento to chair the Expert Advisory Committee (EAC) called for by AB1757, which met to further develop their recommended climate targets for natural and working lands. A 2022 addendum to the historic and wide-ranging California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, AB1757 requires that the EAC establish, in collaboration with the California Department of Agriculture, as well as the state’s Natural Resources Agency and its Air Resources Board, a range of goals that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet the state’s adaptation and mitigation goals through natural climate solutions.

The EAC’s diverse make-up — comprising academics, frontline communities, practitioners, advocates, and tribal individuals — provides ample perspective and deep expertise in the relevant fields. In this meeting, the EAC considered cross-cutting recommendations. Chief among these recommendations is linking short-term and long-term actions to enhance resilience and increase net carbon sequestration throughout the NWL sector. This will ensure gains made from restoration, such as fuels management or riparian restoration, endure by being secured with lasting instruments such as conservation easements. There is also concurrence about the need for a significant increase in conservation of these natural and working land types—from forests to agricultural, grass and shrublands to tidal wetlands and nearshore environments, deserts, and even within urban systems. Another key area of agreement is to restore climate resilient native species across the suite of habitat types.

California’s own forest loss and degradation has led to the emission of literally billions of tons of CO2. With the harvest of old growth forest and the conversion of over a third of the state’s forests to other uses. Fortunately, this sector is one which we can manage for the reabsorption of significant amounts of emissions; we hope it will provide a model for other states and nations facing similar issues. The Committee will meet again before its October deadline to submit recommendations to the State.

• The Week highlighted our use of Working Forest Conservation Easements in their round-up of good news, under the headline “Private forest owners can play a role in curbing climate change.”

• In a USA Today piece entitled “The next Maui could be anywhere: Hawaii tragedy points to US wildfire vulnerability,” PFT co-founder and president, Laurie Wayburn, offered comment on the effects of climate change-induced conflagrations nationwide.

• And, if you happen to be in Los Angeles on Tuesday, September 12^th, please join us at IMAX West Headquarters for a special screening of our award-winning documentary, Beyond the Trees. RSVP here!