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Bringing a Landscape Back to Life
Collins prepares to plant 3 million trees near Goose Lake
FOREST CONSERVATION + RESTORATION
Aftermath: for the black-backed woodpecker, there’s nothing more appealing. This rare bird is at home in the charred remains of pines that still stand amidst a burn scar seven miles wide and six miles long near Goose Lake. Blending in perfectly with blackened bark, a yellow blaze their only adornment, the black-backed woodpecker feasts on the wood-boring beetles who have turned the dead trees into an all-you-can-eat buffet. And for the innovative foresters at Collins, that’s just fine. After consulting with biologists from California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Collins made sure that during the process of salvaging and clearing an area the size of Washington D.C., certain burned stands were retained especially for the woodpeckers.
In 2012, lightning ignited a wildfire that burned 93,000 acres in Oregon and California, consuming 20,806 acres of FSC Certified pine forest. Today, Collins, a timber company known for its excellence in stewardship forestry, is bringing this forest back to life. As resilient as nature can be, without help it could take centuries for this landscape to grow into its former flowing mosaic of forest habitats. PFT worked with Collins to secure a $2.5 million habitat restoration grant from the Wildlife Conservation Board, providing the lead funding for an enormous undertaking: to restore and permanently conserve all 32,686 acres under an easement donated by Collins.
How big an undertaking? Three million seedlings will be nurtured in giant greenhouses for two years. Meanwhile, the restoration team prepares the 32-square-mile site, to keep scrub from overtaking the landscape and blocking sunlight from new trees. They have two years to figure out how to transport so many young trees and accommodate at least fifty tree-planting crew members for nearly three months on the land—one person can plant 1,000 trees a day, traversing varied terrain while laden with as many saplings as he or she can carry.
How Climate Change Influences Species Movement…or Not
USING CALIFORNIA AS A CASE STUDY, RESEARCHERS FIND CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS ARE MORE COMPLEX THAN ONE MIGHT THINK.
SCIENCE
Steve Beissinger, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, presented findings from his research at a recent Klamath-Cascade Council meeting. The following is brief digest of the research review. A link to the article and its citations is provided below.
Climate change is predicted to greatly impact living systems in the coming decades, potentially surpassing habitat loss as the greatest driver of biodiversity change. Biogeographic responses (spatial changes in the abundance and distribution of species populations)are expected to be common. Climate change studies have principally examined effects related to widespread increases in mean temperature—the “warming fingerprint.” However, warming is not the only factor in how, or if, a species’ range will shift. This study of climate change in California found that the timing and amount of precipitation, as well as a finer grained analysis of both the physical habitat features and species’ natural history, were also important.
The researchers mapped 20th century changes in moisture and temperature: annual mean, minimum, and maximum temperature; annual total precipitation; actual evapotranspiration; and climatic water deficit. They found that precipitation increases occurred across much of northern and central California but decreased in the south. Portions of the Cascade Ranges, Mount Shasta, and Lassen regions cooled, while the deserts, Central Valley, and urban areas warmed greatly.
Findings were compared to published evidence of elevational shifts in birds, butterflies, mammals, and plants. Species have shifted both upslope and downslope, as well as not shifting. Populations of the same species responded differently on different mountain slopes, aspects, and microclimates. Specific local land cover and terrain were significant factors as well. In other words, biogeographic responses to climate change were not solely determined by warming —nor with any other single aspect of climate change, but rather a combination of factors.
The team identified four key species-specific factors:
Exposure—climate change across a population’s range and the degree to which local microhabitat buffers change
Sensitivity—the degree to which a population depends on its physiological tolerance to various aspects of climate
Adaptive capacity—how species at a location respond by persisting in place or migrating to more suitable locations
Indirect effects—impacts on interacting species, including mutualists, predators, and competitors
The impacts of climate change are complex and diverse, affecting biological systems at multiple levels, from single organisms to entire biomes. We need to move beyond the simple concept of “global warming” to adopt a more nuanced way to diagnose and predict future climate impacts. This will be fundamental for guiding policy and conservation decisions at both local and global scales.
Research Review: Beyond a warming fingerprint: individualistic biogeographic responses to heterogeneous climate change in California, Global Change Biology (2014), doi: 10.1111/gcb.12638, Giovanni Rapacciuolo, et al. University of California, Berkeley
http://bit.ly/beyond_warming
The whole is better than the sum of its parts—especially when it comes to natural systems. It’s why we focus on connecting conserved working lands across the landscapes that matter most for climate, water security, and wildlife. Since our first project in 1998, we’ve worked to conserve a key corridor in one of the last great landscapes in California, an effort that continues today.
A hidden gem, Sierra Valley sits at the southernmost edge of the Klamath-Cascade, just north of Lake Tahoe. Mountain snowmelt and rain feed the valley’s extensive wetlands, where lush meadows and pastures form the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Feather River and then the Sacramento river, key to California’s water supplies. The wetlands are a major stop on the Pacific Flyway for 230 migrating bird species, and the valley provides breeding habitat for more than 17 rare or threatened species including the Sandhill Crane, White-faced Ibis, and the Black Tern.
Sierra Valley’s pastures and forests have a long, proud history of cattle ranching and timber production. With Lucy Blake’s advice, Artie Strang asked PFT to help him conserve the vital natural qualities of his land and keep it working, as Sierra Valley families have for generations. Our shared goal was a protected-yet-productive corridor on the valley’s west side, linking the wet valley floor with its forested headwaters.
Artie Strang, heir to homesteaders from 1849, was the first landowner to complete a conservation easement in Sierra Valley: the 1,840-acre Valley View Angus Ranch. Today, this cattle ranch is owned and managed by Linda Sanford, who recalls:
“When we first got our easement done, everyone thought we were crazy, but in time other ranches saw that nothing had changed—it is still a working landscape, but now it’s saved from development. Slowly they joined in, and now we are linking ranches along the valley. It is a dream come true to see the beautiful Sierra Valley remain just as it was. “
So far, PFT has protected 4,467 acres of working lands, securing five conservation easements along Sierra Valley’s southern edge. These lands play an important role in creating contiguous habitat and providing key linkages between two National Forests, BLM land, and the Antelope Valley Wildlife Area.
Now PFT is working the Martinetti family to conserve an additional 610 acres of forests, wet meadows, and two miles of Hamlin Creek, a key tributary of the Feather River.
A neighbor of the Martinetti Ranch, Linda Sanford looks out from Valley View Angus Ranch and sees the whole picture: “All the ranchers linking together. It’s just what this valley needs.”
Forest Carbon Offsets: Time for A National Standard?
POLICY
Forest carbon offsets have come a long way from the early “wild west” days of carbon trading that began in the late 1990’s. As regulatory and market environments matured, so have offset accounting standards. High quality, science-based offsets that fully compensate for CO2 emissions are today’s gold standard—namely the forest carbon offset rules pioneered in California and now spreading across the U.S and Canada. These standards produce offsets that are real, additional, permanent, and third-party verified. California’s standardized approach to quantifying emissions reductions was adopted under the landmark AB32 climate law, and is now yielding the first regulatory quality offsets in the nation.
The Forest Project Offset Protocols permit forest owners across the U.S. to register projects under California’s program. In addition, the Forest Protocols were recently adopted for regulatory compliance by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative across nine northeastern states, laying the groundwork for a de facto national market for forest offsets. The use of this standard is growing.
There are more than 35 forest carbon projects being developed in states all across the country for this market. Nationwide, this represents about one million acres of conserved natural forests that will reduce CO2 emissions by an estimated 20 million tons in the near term and much more over time. When the same offset standard is applied coast-to-coast, it can stabilize the growing market and provide certainty for those wanting to reduce emissions in a way that is honest to the atmosphere and good for forests.
While forest loss and degradation is a serious problem and major source of US CO2 emissions, forests are not included “under the cap,” nor are they regulated by AB32 or other climate laws. In the period 2000-2005, of the seven nations that contain more than a million square kilometers of forest—Russia, Brazil, the U.S., Canada, Indonesia, China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—the United States had the greatest percentage loss. The U.S. lost 6 percent of its forest cover, totaling 46,332 square miles (1).
Prior forest loss and the resulting CO2 emissions have already left the U.S. with a hefty carbon debt. Forest offset projects pay down this debt directly by increasing carbon gains and reducing forest loss. A standardized, nationwide carbon market is becoming a viable way to reward forest owners for conserving their forests and managing them for increased carbon stores on the ground—while sustainably harvesting climate-friendly wood products.
(1)Hansen, et al: Quantification of global gross forest cover loss; PNAS: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0912668107