Fall 2022 ForestLife
President’s Letter
Looking Back, Looking Forward
In 2023, PFT will celebrate its 30th year. A lot has happened in these years, with many of our initiatives moving from concept to pilot to implementation. Now, we must move to the broad adoption and landscape scale. Much remains to be done!
When we first introduced the concept of conserving US forests, especially older forests, as valuable carbon sinks in 1993, we worked with leading scientists from Jerry Franklin to E.O. Wilson, Mark Harmon, Steve Running and many more. But few landowners or even advocates working to address climate change took notice. The advocacy was focused on tropical forests, and landowners had no way to be compensated for forest carbon sequestration. When we introduced the concept of forest carbon offsets as a voluntary means to help meet California’s goals of reducing emissions, I distinctly remember one landowner asking, “Are you kidding? What planet are you from?” Conserving older forests is now front and center for federal forests, and the forest carbon market helps to conserve millions of acres across the country. It is a good beginning.
Thankfully, in August, the federal government enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes sweeping climate investments. However, for their broad climate benefits, forest restoration and conservation investments lag far behind the same assets in the energy and transportation sectors. To win the climate battle, stemming the loss of forests and restoring their full carbon potential must become a “Tier 1” solution, with investments commensurate with the benefits forests bring. We must do more!
When PFT first developed the Working Forest Conservation Easement (WFCE), which guides forest management to achieve specific restoration management goals as an alternative to “forever wild” and “no development only” conservation easements, the response was often “Great idea, but no one will do that.” We’ve conserved over 300,000 acres, linking millions more in conservation corridors across critical forest landscapes, and the WFCE concept is now in use across the country. At the same time, it is quite feasible to apply this concept to ensure the function of a crucial, vast, and vital 12-million-acre watershed region which houses globally renowned biodiversity at home in Oregon and California. This area is unique in the world for its diversity of forests, other plants, and wildlife, and it holds the heart of California’s water supply. It is critically threatened by fragmentation and degradation. We must do more!
As we get ready to celebrate 30 years of achievements for forests in 2023, I want to thank you all for your support, collaboration, and partnership in getting us this far. And yet, there is so more that must be done to address climate change, to create a safer future and to ensure the richness of life that we see is there for future generations of all species. With your help, we will now take PFT to the next level of impact.
In gratitude,
