Forest Flash: Water resiliency, climate investments, and forest stewardship
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.
California’s climate-resilient water strategy
Late last month, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an Executive Order directing his administration to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure California’s water resilience in the face of climate change.
“California’s water challenges are daunting….Climate change magnifies the risks,” said Governor Newsom. The Executive Order notes that “climate change is having a profound impact on water and other resources, making the climate warmer and more variable, which reduces mountain snowpack, intensifies drought and wildfires, and drives shorter, more intense wet seasons that worsen flooding.” The intense variability of our changing, warming climate means that restoring and conserving forested watersheds is key to water security.
This order instructs state agencies to use strategies that PFT has long advocated, including prioritizing multi-benefit approaches that meet multiple needs at once, relying on natural infrastructure, and taking regional approaches to healthy watersheds. Addressing water resilience will help supply drinking water across the state, reduce the flood risks that threaten public safety, help replenish groundwater aquifers, and provide habitat for threatened native fish populations.
PFT’s Healthy Watersheds California program is advancing the comprehensive restoration and conservation of the state’s primary source watersheds as essential components of its water system infrastructure. We are pleased to announce that PFT recently received a $225,000 grant from the Healthy Watersheds Consortium (funded by the U.S. EPA, NRCS, and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities) as well as a $400,000 grant from the California Wildlife Conservation Board in support of this work. The latter grant entails working with both Duke University and the University of California to model the impacts of climate change on the HWC region in order to identify the best strategies for promoting wildlife adaptation through restoration and conservation in the region.
Update: Cap and Invest in Oregon
There has been big progress on Oregon’s proposed climate legislation, HB 2020. Given the recent news that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have reached 415 parts per million for the first time in human history, there is no better time for Oregon to act, and take a lead on climate change, than now.
Thanks to the advocacy of a broad coalition of Oregon groups, including PFT, the legislature’s Joint Committee on Carbon Reduction (JCCR) has agreed in principle to a new version of the bill (contained in omnibus Amendment HB 2020-84). As amended, HB 2020 would dedicate funding to natural and working lands—fully 20% of the climate investments made by this bill—as well as those communities most affected by climate change.
This week, the JCCR moved this critical legislation forward to the Ways and Means Committee, the next step toward final passage, in a committee vote. PFT has been active in advancing the inclusion of natural and working lands as critical to the climate solution, and we are grateful for the JCCR’s leadership on this, particularly that of Representatives Ken Helm, Pam Marsh, and Karin Power, along with Senator Michael Dembrow.
We’ll keep you posted on HB 2020’s progress and how you can help. For more about how PFT’s work helps heal the climate, watch our new video.
The importance of stewardship
The Pacific Forest Trust’s stewardship work ensures the permanent protection of important natural values of forest properties—fisheries, water supplies, wildlife habitat, carbon storage, and open space—while ensuring good management of sustainable, productive forests.
The elk pictured here at PFT’s Van Eck Oregon Forest benefit directly from PFT’s stewardship.
“Our management of the Van Eck Oregon property is guided by the goals set out in the property’s conservation easement, which promote stewarding for multiple outcomes,” notes PFT Stewardship Manager Timothy Hipp. “These include the restoration of wildlife habitat throughout the understory and canopy, watershed and watercourse health and protection, and long-term sustainable harvest of high-quality forest products, while also enhancing the forest’s ability to store atmospheric carbon.”
The Van Eck forests abound in wildlife and fish; elk, bears, mountain lions, and many species of birds, amphibians, and five species of salmon reside on or otherwise make use of the property. “Consistently increasing volumes of wood products have been harvested from Van Eck Oregon over the two decades that PFT has managed the property,” notes Hipp, “and our management yields consistently increasing harvest amounts and increasing carbon stores in both products and on the land itself, continuing to increase over time, in contrast to most other management approaches.”
“We ensure that lands under our conservation and stewardship are managed to the highest standards through frequent contact with landowners and land managers, regular visits to the properties, and the use of remote sensing and other publicly available data to assess easement compliance and changes in the properties,” Hipp adds.
For a map of all of the properties we steward, visit our Conservation Projects page.