Save the trees so the trees can save us

It’s a nice idea: Take a severely damaged redwood forest in Northern California and regenerate it into a lush expanse of redwood trees. Prohibit development so natural ecosystems revive. Carve trails through the undergrowth so new generations can enjoy the splendour of the tall trees. Allow light harvesting of the trees so communities that are economically dependent on the forest remain as healthy as the forest itself. It is, indeed, a very nice idea.

Unfortunately, it is also difficult to put into practise. The coastal redwood region of California has been caught up in hot confrontations for the past two decades. Environmentalists fed up with the destruction of old-growth redwoods have been battling big timber corporations. Local communities dependent on jobs from the timber corporations have been battling environmentalists. The only common ground has been a mutual interest in the forests themselves, which have been dwindling at an alarming rate.

Enter Redwood Forest Foundation, Inc. (RFFI), the world’s first non-profit organization dedicated to saving redwood forests by way of private capital. This June, RFFI purchased the Usal Redwood Forest in Mendocino County, a 50,000-acre parcel of land that had been heavily logged by its former owner, the Hawthorne Timber Company. Not wanting to see the land sold to a developer or to another big timber corporation, local environmentalists and foresters united to create RFFI, which bought the forest for $65 million, a sum borrowed from Bank of America at a reduced rate.

“I’ve always had this naive belief that if you can get people to sit down and talk and be honest with each other, you can resolve a lot of problems,” says Don Kemp, RFFI’s executive director. “And that’s what this deal has been about, bringing people of different perspectives together for a common purpose.”

Redwood Forest Foundation intends to restore the forest to its natural state over the course of the coming century. In the meantime, the plans involve partnering with The Conservation Fund, a Virginia-based environmental group, to guard the land against future development. As the trees regenerate, local foresters will resume harvesting at a rate not exceeding 2 percent annually to preserve local jobs and help pay off the loan. And as movement to curtail climate change gathers momentum, RFFI will likely profit from utility companies like Pacific Gas and Electric, which is beginning to pay forest owners for carbon sequestration—the role trees play in reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Any profit from the land in the future will be directed back into the local community.

“All of these factors are converging to make a concept like RFFI more viable,” says Chris Kelly, California program director of The Conservation Fund. He added that environmentalists and business interests are watching RFFI as a test case for what could become a new way of safeguarding natural resources. State and federal money is limited for purchasing large tracts of land. If the market can support a new model of sustainable working forests, the whole globe could be the better for it. Bank of America alone has set aside $20 billion to finance such initiatives.

“This kind of program needs to happen on a way bigger scale,” says Art Harwood, RFFI’s president and a Mendocino sawmill owner. “You can save forests all over the world. Fifty thousand acres are only the start.”

Find out more: www.rffi.org