Funding Area: Environment
Since 1993, Pacific Forest Trust has created economic incentives that reward private forest owners for conserving their lands and practicing sustainable forestry. We have helped shape regional and national forest conservation and climate policies, all to save wildlife and their habitats, create effective climate change solutions, conserve intact forested landscapes, and protect natural water sources. We work with landowners to conserve well-managed forests, building resilient landscapes. We protect, restore, and sustain forests to mitigate climate change and help species adapt. We ensure water security by protecting forests that provide life-sustaining water to millions. We conserve and restore habitat to protect the animals and plants that depend on forests.
Projects We Support
Elevating Natural Working Lands Sector Role as Key Climate Solution
Our climate is rapidly changing due to the excess buildup of heat-trapping gases—especially carbon dioxide—blanketing the Earth. Conserving, restoring, and replanting forests will safeguard natural processes that regulate climate-altering gases in our atmosphere.
Forest loss and degradation are the second largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by people, second only to our use of fossil fuels, according to the EPA. While forests absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) as they grow, they emit CO2 when they are lost or degraded. On average in the last decade, 1.5 million forested acres were lost per year in the U.S. due to conversion for development or agricultural purposes. We support a combination of reducing forest loss, restoring forests to older more natural conditions, and reforesting former woodlands in order to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce the effects of climate change.
CO2 is the most abundant climate-altering gas in our atmosphere, making up over 80% of the total greenhouse gas emissions by the U.S. Forests naturally remove CO2 from the atmosphere, storing carbon within their trees, herbaceous plants, and soils. Forests absorb between 17 and 20% of CO2 emissions globally and could reach double that if we conserve, reforest, and restore older forests.
Forests are an essential part of the climate change solution, but policies to leverage the natural power of forests to combat climate change have lagged behind those to reduce fossil fuel emissions. By pioneering policies and incentives to enable conservation and restoration of contiguous, working forest landscapes, and promote sustainable forest management, we have demonstrated powerful, effective new ways to lower net CO2 emissions. In so doing, we also conserve America’s forests for all of the benefits they provide.
Support Dates: March, 2024 – Ongoing
Note: This information is from the Pacific Forest Trust website.
