Fall 2023
President’s Letter: Endurance and Ambition
Seven months into 2023, the message is inescapable. Heat domes. Wildfires on 20 million acres. Unbreathable air. With each fresh disaster, scientists identify climate change as a major factor increasing their intensity and scale. Our home planet is sending out distress signals that get louder every day. Will this compel us to decisive action?
Even if we cannot agree on the drivers of climate change, can we find common ground to drive solutions to these crises? Perhaps the answer is right beneath our feet, in our common ground.
We all need clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, a safe place to live where neither floods nor fires are an imminent threat. What if we could achieve those things while also enacting a major solution to climate change?
This is not wishful thinking; it is a solution right within our grasp. By managing our forests for their climate benefits, we have a triple win. Restoring more fire-resistant and resilient forests—those older forests that are naturally-adapted to our fire prone environment—is the most cost-effective, timely means of securing cleaner air, greater water security, and reducing net CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.
More than reforestation, more than saving old forests, the single biggest thing we can do in the near term is to manage our forests to become older, with fewer but larger trees across the landscape. These managed forests hold more carbon, hold and release more water more safely, and burn more safely. They are treasure-houses of biodiversity. We should grow and maintain them. It’s a commonsense solution for our common ground.
PFT has championed this approach for decades, and that message is becoming heard (see Harnessing the Power of Nature and Beyond the Trees below). So, while we aren’t “there” quite yet, we are getting closer.
Join us!
More in this Issue of ForestLife
- Managing for Climate Resilience on Mount Ashland Demonstration Forest
- Saving the Source: Conserving 11,000 acres of the Trinity River Headwaters
- Harnessing the Power of Nature to Address Climate Change
- Donor Profile: Barbara and Mark Daugherty
- Beyond the Trees: Our New Award-Winning Film
- Celebrating 30 Years and Forest Wildlife: Forest Fete 2023