BEYOND THE TREES (2023)

for [Music] [Music] forests are more than just trees they are essential to a livable world yet the function forests provide is often unknown to us they filter our air and water and are home to countless living creatures including people worldwide the beauty and benefits of a standing Forest are irreplaceable however we're seeing these forests disappear right before our eyes the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity are the two most significant threats to the health of our planet both are linked to the loss of forests and we are not working fast enough to turn the situation around for decades mainstream Forest management has been stagnant but one organization has spearheaded a radical new approach Pacific Forest Trust or PFT is a nonprofit organization that saw a way to align the natural powers of forests with the undeniable power of Finance working with local communities and land owners PFT has been shaping this model of restoring and sustaining forests across California Oregon and Washington testing out ideas over the years in the Vanek forests while traditional Forest man management focuses on the output of Timber and fiber PFT manages for the whole forest from the tops of the trees to the Unseen rote systems below with thriving forests being the most natural solution to climate change it's not enough to just plant trees the loss and depletion of forests is the second largest source of CO2 emissions globally the kind of ecological forestry that we're doing the conservation forestry that we're doing rebuilds everything it's flipping that model on its head I'm Lori wurn and I'm the president and co-founder of the Pacific Forest trust we talk about forestry but what we have managed for is just trees and that breaks down the whole system but by just tweaking our management we can shift the Paradigm about what forestry really is about when scoping where they might have the greatest impact Lori and her team hone in on forests not government-owned forests not forests and national parks but private forests private forests are actually 60% of all the forests in the US it's not the national forest it's not the national parks the dominant Forest type is privately owned we saw that as the most threatened part of forests because what are the forests that you can lose they're the private Force those become the shopping malls those become converted to Vineyards those are the ones that get liquidated for all the timber that's on them to pay the bills those are the ones that are at risk and they're all interwoven with public land ownership so if you think about it if you think of the landscape as a quilt then those private lands are that's all the moth holes that's where you're tearing it apart and when you tear that apart you don't have the forest ecosystem so what Pacific Forest trust uniquely did was say let's reweave that landscape let's reweave that quilt so that it keeps us warm if you will so that it is functioning as a whole well I think Pacific Forest trust has really changed the conversation dramatically this expansion and understanding among private Forest landowners and what can be done getting both ecological benefits and economic benefits simultaneously and that's been so much a part of the conversation I think is this notion that somehow you got to either do plantations or you got to preserve it and that's not valid private land is where PFT can create the most change which makes private land owners compelling Partners it started as a partnership between myself and a man named Fred vanck picture West Coast meets East Coast works in the forest Works on Wall Street in unlikely pairing yet a meeting of the Minds when I met Fred it was in a slightly boring forestry meeting and the two of us were standing on the side and we began talking about what we love about forests Fred was an investment manager by trade he also loved trees birds and other Wildlife just like Lori and that began a conversation that has ended up in these demonstration forests of the vanc [Music] forests Fred vanck is my uncle and one aspect of Fred is that he was crazy about trees he was also a very frugal investor and a very frugal person buying clear-cut Redwood forest was a very natural thing for him to do I think he would just see that opportunity as like I can buy this for a song and I know that forests regrow there's an enormous Synergy between how you manage forests well and how you manage your finances as well the philosophy that Fred had was to build and appreciate and hold and benefit that's exactly what you do when you want to restore a forest so the idea of working together to build back the forest bace to appreciate the full value of forests both economically and ecologically was what really clicked with Fred a conservation easement is a legal tool that provides the freedom of forever it gives the time and space to shift from thinking about the financial Return of the forest over the next few years to The Next Century and it pays for the time value of money to make that shift a conservation easement is a promise by a property owner it's legally binding for usually forever you can do anything as a property owner to a property this will limit your activity in one form or another and in return often the easement includes some kind of guarantee or financial incentive like maybe a payment to offset the Lost Revenue that a landowner might get if they don't Harvest their trees uh in a particular year once you've granted that on a property it takes a pressure off you know make money from it and that was the protection you know effectively that was given to the forest by Fred Van Pacific Forest ress is really one of the first organizations to Pioneer the use of working Forest conservation easements and essentially incentivizing land owners to do better Forest management PFT developed this tool that really Embraces a dynamic model of conservation that's now the national model for private Forest land conservation is to not just look at set asides to look at how these forests are conserved embracing a different approach to Forest management that conservation easement is a permanent legal tool it'll be here forever our contribution to the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere includes burning fossil fuels and cutting large areas of forests often also turning them into sprawling development carbon emissions are the number one contributor to climate change today but forests have the capacity to store this carbon pulling it safely from the air and storing it for hundreds and thousands of years the bigger the tree the more carbon it contains when we're talking about storing carbon there's carbon stored in all the parts of the tree and so it's important to try to measure that and get a handle on that so the equations that we use take into account the branches and the bark as well as the bowl of the tree each time we cut a tree most of the carbon stored in that tree is released back into the atmosphere only a fraction stays in a wood product so clear cutting and Plantation forestry don't actually store more carbon it's been the source of carbon investing in conserving and managing forests well is investing in climate Solutions and increasing carbon storage and PFT developed a way to get land owners paid for the additional carbon storage in their forests adding to the payments for conservation easements so we developed uh a law in the state of California that identified what's called a carbon offset as a means by by which people who have to emit CO2 can mitigate that to Zero by absorbing CO2 so it's a part of the climate solution and it pays land owners to hold trees and grow a bigger older more natural Forest if you can sell the carbon to keep it standing you've been paid to keep that Forest there and then you can keep growing from that point and keep it at the most productive state that it's in and because you've been able to sell the stocks as carbon you've made money to have it stay at that level an investor in a sustainable Forest benefits by getting carbon credits potentially earlier on they get less income from cutting down trees earlier because obviously that's why they're getting the carbon credits but the beauty of redwoods is after 20 or 30 years they're growing in an accelerated manner so there's really more value to the forest long term by not harvesting so much in the beginning investors um buy Forest land generally to cut down trees and generate income if you do it under a sustainable manner you will hopefully get less income from cutting down trees in the short term but in the long term its potential will grow because the the trees are bigger and can generate equivalent or greater income in the future and that's one of Lor's great insights technological advances in the early 20th century quickly made clear cutting the dominant Harvest model devouring all of the trees across millions of acres of land the cycle from forest to trees to Mill became an instant and efficient source of steady profit I think originally the approach of going in logging um properties even further back than 30 years ago was going in and just you know producing as much as you can as quick as you can and get it out to the mill and and and make that money some even justify clear cutting as a way to reduce forest fires yet clear cutting forests has been extremely costly where the Earth's natural resources are concerned [Music] to clarify PFT still Cuts trees but they don't clear cut entire forests they look at the whole Forest to determine which trees to cut based on what the forest needs for restoration and the land owners needs for sales you know when we're done and we leave the habitat and um the property is left in a better State than when we started so we're in not only cleaning out the small junk but we're also cleaning out the larger trees that are rotting or or failing so that in the end you know 10 15 years from now the forest you walk into is a large timbered Forest if if we can keep managing our Force like these are being managed here there is a future in [Music] it the loggers PFT employees in its ecological Forest management use Cutting Edge harvesting techniques both the goal and the approach differ from intensive Timber management ensuring the forest is thoughtfully harvested and continually improved overall companies like Sergeant excavation family-owned and operated bring a high level of understanding and and experience to this Harvest approach growing up the model of conservation was about setting up national parks my early career working overseas in sustainable ecological development has really inspired me and a lot of that work was built on these pillars of of ecology in the Forest Arena Jerry Franklin you could say that our our whole model of what we're trying to manage for was inspired by Jerry Pacific Forest trust is probably the most effective organization that I've ever encountered in terms of management of private Forest lands so the approaches that pacific Forest trust has taken are ones that really enable private Forest land owners to not only learn about but begin to practice alternative approaches that will sustain a broader array of forest values than traditional production forestry does so the dichotomy in Forest has either been set aside the old growth or just have really young stuff and Jerry's work about valuing old trees it's kind of like valuing the wisdom of old people and that's really kind of the secret sauce as you're constantly learning in Academia and research about these new incredibly cool amazing features of Horus so how do you integrate that into management the Vanek forests are living Laboratories a place to learn from the forest and refine ways to best restore and support Forest function through years of trial and error PFT discovered how to restore thousands of Acres of wildlife habitats and Advance other conservation efforts when we pick up something pick up an animal on one of our camera traps it tells us about Forest Health if we find a rare animal especially something listed like a spotted out which I have picked up on our cameras before we use that to adjust our management style and May be aoid in area if we are picking up these animals on a tra where we potentially have a harvest that year just good indicators of Forest Health well there's there's sort of two habitat goals that one has when you're trying to manage for spotted aisles or and for other older Forest species and one is protect what we have left and as we all know so much of the olda forest has been removed has been converted to Industrial very simplified Forest but the other goal is bring back or restore much of that habitat as much as possible Pacific Forest trust was doing that and is doing that in both in both categories let's go check out the uh the bear wallow see if anybody's been by hey check that out oh yeah uh there it is Elk looks like the elk been here no where's the camera have you checked it recently uh let's see jocka used to have it here I think he moved it up because the Bears knocking it down yeah but it's always amazing to me how a tiny little feature like this has so much wildlife in it managing with the forest looking at it and building up on what it has intrinsically in it and work with that as we're seeking to restore the kind of vibrant resilient world that we want you'll talk to a for say what did you do today he said oh I was just walking around I was just looking for them is really learning okay he I want to open this up over here to get more light here or I really want to favor those wonderful Hardwoods there because those are like the cafeteria for the rest of all the beings that live here but you only get that kind of learning when you get out and you spend time in the woods just walking around there's is addressing the organisms and trees we can see in plain sight yet there's a whole network of roots holding hands underground and an entire ecosystem up above in the canopies that are disappearing the uppermost layer intact canopies collect and store water lower the temperature comb pollutants out of the air and house a whole world of unseen organisms Fern mats play a key role in healthy canopies these normally grow up in the very top of the trees they thought well let's give it a shot down here and see if it'll work this will also so it's been super successful because once you've got those spores going then it'll take off on its own well if we were to let the process unfold naturally of course eventually they would develop into this structural complexity and you would see this arboreal biodiversity but that's a process that would require centuries so if if you could wait but how long are you willing to wait are you willing to wait for longer than the United States has been in existence before it happens I think also the idea of letting things unfold naturally is problematic these days because none of this is natural anymore like what does natural even mean in a landscape where at least 95% of the Redwood range has been logged at least once and most of that has been logged again this isn't natural so if we were in an a primary forest or an old growth forest that had the big Fern mats up in the canopy that could rain their little spores down onto the younger trees and disperse that way sure let that unfold naturally but in this landscape where from the top of this tree we look out onto this sea of young trees where there isn't a fern mat within how many miles from here I have no idea it's not going to happen naturally here if we want the fern mats back in this Forest then we have to bring them in if we don't manage forests differently we leave them vulnerable and we lose an extraordinarily powerful tool to reduce climate change when the trees are cleared the canopy disappears without the canopy we disrupt the source of water that feeds the forest and the habitats within when all the trees are cut the forest can't absorb carbon resulting in too much carbon in the atmosphere PF is working with Steve and Marie to restore Fern mats to the canopies of vanck testing out effective ways to accelerate canopy layer restoration this will help these magnificent forests and US Thrive as climate change makes the world hotter and drier over the years PFT has been working with a whole community of people to prove the value and practicality of the forest climate solution anybody who follows social media the news reads the paper listens to their neighbor is hearing about crisis after crisis after crisis it is absolutely urgent that we change that the US has a strategic advantage in the fight against climate change it's vast Forest land we have the means in this country to make a significant impact by properly utilizing managing and conserving our forests we have a few years to really turn our big ship of what we do in life around we don't want to shut down what we're doing in how we manage in forests we want to change its direction by prioritizing biodiversity and older more naturally carbon rich forests PFT is creating more resilient forests from their holistic approach of maring Forest conservation and financial growth we can do so much in such a short period of time on the vck in 20 years we've more than doubled the volume of carbon that's stored we've more than doubled the amount of Timber that we have here we've taken off an average of over a million Bo foot a year so we have been earning millions of dollars through Timber and through carbon and at the same time we've doubled the amount of carbon that is stored both in the forest and then in these products too this transforms what Forest management looks like if you manage for the forest you get the trees but if you only manage for the trees you don't get the forest you get these rows of lines lines and Pines or lines and fur short-term rotation plantations deplete everything from the soil to the water to the biodiversity and the economy it is a key part of the emissions problem we face today the CO2 sequestration storage is overwhelmingly greater in natural Forest than it is in Forest that manage for wood production on very short rotations short rotation Plantation management stores no carbon you hear so much about tree planting as a climate solution these days and the reason nobody wants to be against tree planting is it's like being against mom and apple pie it's really sweet but by itself it's a sugar high it's not enough to be a nourishing meal the whole Forest is the nourishing meal when you're on short rotations 40 years 35 years 30 years you have a net carbon debt that you're always repaying and what we need to do what we're doing on the van te forests is we are repaying that debt and then we're setting up a huge savings account so tree planting is a piece of the solution but the driver of the climate solution is changing how we manage forests to really bring them back as forests not as tree plantations [Music] one of the things that makes working on the venic for is so wonderful is building a community of people who really make it happen in forestry what we do requires a team there is no single shingle operation that gets it done you know every piece of what we all do is important for the whole to work out and we have incredible staff and people we work with every day the biologists and the archaeologists and the geologists and the Foresters and and the tree fallers and especially all the way up to like the Pacific Forest trust who creates the environment where all this can flourish so there's a lot of players out there making this making this happen that's makes it [Music] functional when you're doing something the first time you just have no idea if get them work or not and you guys have really made something fabulous [Music] happen I would like to see myself coming back down into this forest from the air cuz I won't be here anymore but I can imagine what this looks like and what I see is trees that are you know we have quite a few trees now that are five and 6t in diameter actually here I see them being 10t in diameter and I see our fish populations Back In The Stream here I'd love to see marbled murets coming up this little drainage here coming up at 3: in the morning they're going they're going 60 M an hour this beautiful lk- likee sound headed up they're able to roost here and then at about 5: in the morning the logging crew is coming in and they're doing their setup and they'll be doing Timber Harvest on that day and when they head home the Bears are coming out having dinner having a conversation the elk come down from the top of squa Creek Ridge to go through Fieldbrook come through here I'd love to see that [Music] one of the really powerful things about what we do is to show what's possible it's possible to create a more livable world it's possible to address climate change it is possible to bring back the biodiversity that we're on track to be eliminating Ben shows how you do it [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e e

Channel: Pacific Forest Trust

Views: 3,376

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Id: UMNCtUmz0-Q

Length: 34min 6sec (2046 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024