| Forest Service to sell carbon credits to fund reforestation |
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The Forest Service wants to use the public's increasing awareness of
climate change in order to raise private funds to address the agency's
1 million acre reforestation backlog.
The agency and National Forest Foundation launched a plan yesterday to sell credits to individuals seeking to offset their greenhouse gas footprint by measuring carbon stored in trees on areas reforested after wildfires, tornados and other catastrophic events. The asking price for the two pilot projects is $6 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, but there is no estimate of how many credits will be sold or how much money the program may bring in. The Forest Service has been criticized for its failure to address its reforestation needs as the number of wildfires and acres burned has skyrocketed this decade. From fiscal 2000 through 2006, the Forest Service only addressed about 20 percent of reforestation needs annually, while reforestation needs skyrocketed, according to the budget documents. USFS identified nearly 1.1 million acres needing reforestation over the past two years, but only got to 153,000 acres in 2005 and 264,000 acres in 2006. Credits will first be sold to reforest about 500 acres of the Custer National Forest in Montana burned by the 2002 Kraft Springs Fire, and about 1,400 acres of Idaho's Payette National Forest in Idaho damaged by a tornado last June. Those sites were chosen based on the agency's expectation for natural regeneration of those sites, Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell told reporters. U.S. forests sequester enough carbon to offset 10 percent to 15 percent of the country's C02 emissions, and the Forest Service believes it can raise that figure significantly by planting more trees. "Young, healthy, growing forests are forests that are sequestering carbon at a faster rate than other forests that are measured," Kimbell said, noting carbon is also stored in finished wood products from timber harvests. However, the reforestation projects may not sequester enough carbon to offset carbon lost or CO2 released in the original catastrophic event, Kimbell acknowledged. "The intent here is to have sites that are again storing carbon and storing carbon at a good rate, not necessarily to replace all that carbon that was lost to the atmosphere in a wildfire," Kimbell said. "That would be a difficult thing to measure and a difficult thing to do in a short period of time." No guarantees Unlike carbon sequestration in forestry projects under the California Climate Action Registry, the plan does not guarantee the national forest land will be placed in conservation easements or won't be logged or developed in the future. USFS is not creating a new classification for the project areas, Kimbell said. USFS has hired Arkansas-based Winrock International to monitor the program. While the agency and foundation are promoting the climate change angle to pay for the projects, they note the other potential benefits of reforestation, including clean watershed and improved species habitat. "People do expect their forests to be green and not black," Kimbell said. "It's a pretty powerful model we believe for going forward and providing people to participate and understand the complex issue around managing the the national forest system," said Bill Poissel, president of the National Forest Foundation. Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator for Oregon Wild, says the Forest Service should focus on the trees it has now. "It's great that the Forest Service is taking an interest in this issue and the forests under their management really do play a big role in the United States' carbon equation, but we think they should start by adopting a policy to stop logging old-growth forests that currently stored the most carbon," Heiken said. USFS should instead conduct a comprehensive review of forest restoration that includes studies of carbon storage and ecosystem services such as habitat, water quality, and recreation, Heiken added. Individuals can calculate their carbon footprint and donate money to the National Forest Foundation Carbon Capital Fund at the foundation's Web site.
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