Climate NGO Gets FS Grant to Pay for Landowner Vexar, Fuel Treatments and Hazard Trees

Yesterday we came to the conclusion that the FS could reprogram dollars from S&PF to help with the NFS deficit.  We still don’t know that that is absolutely true, but that’s the best guess of people available to comment.

And here is the news release that triggered that discussion:

PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — This past Wednesday, The Climate Trust was awarded two grants from the U.S. Forest Service totaling nearly $7 million through the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. These funds will support The Climate Trust’s pioneering work in the carbon market, extending opportunities to climate vulnerable and underserved landowners while incentivizing climate-smart forest practices.

A $2 million award will fund The Climate Trust’s Tribal Reservation Allotment Carbon Enrollment (TRACE) program, that will pilot the development of a replicable forest carbon project that aggregates small parcels owned by or held in trust for individual Tribal members.

“Our team is thrilled to support Tribal access to carbon markets in developing this first-of-a-kind project,” said TCT’s Forest Carbon Manager, Madeline Montague.  “To date, no carbon projects include allotment lands because it has been too challenging to aggregate them. The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up large areas of Tribal lands into small allotments that face significant obstacles to carbon market inclusion because of their small size, fractionated ownerships, and bureaucratic hurdles to decision making.”

The Climate Trust’s second award, Enabling Reforestation and Afforestation Success (ERAS), includes nearly $5 million to provide private landowner payments for forest management practices that increase tree regeneration success and reduce forest health threats and risks. Funding will be deployed in the fire-prone forests of Montana and Oregon and the north woods of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.

“In Oregon and Montana, we will be funding post-wildfire forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction activities such as hazard tree removal and fuels reduction treatments. These forest management activities are critical to making Oregon’s forests more resilient to climate change and protecting their ability to continue storing carbon and producing timber,” said Victoria Lockhart, TCT’s Director of Reforestation. Additionally in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, “ERAS funding will pay for various deer browse protections for seedlings to support the development of diverse and healthy forests capable of long-term carbon storage,” explained Jeremy Koslowski, TCT’s Director of Forest Carbon Partnerships.

Both of the new programs will complement The Climate Trust’s existing work developing carbon credit projects with landowners across the country.  To read more about these types of carbon projects, visit us on our website at The Climate Trust.

I looked at the first award (for Tribal access to carbon markets) and it looks similar to this grant program that goes directly to Tribes, based on the eligibility requirement. The total program was $20 mill, while the ceiling for each Tribe was $2 mill; which is also what the Climate Trust received.

Now I’m not a fan of  forest carbon markets from the climate change perspective (trees die and burn up, and there’s all the these accounting problems), (I have never reconciled “all the trees will die from wildfires and climate change,”  and “they are good carbon investments”;  but, from the landowner perspective, money is good; if there were “fairy habitat” markets for enough bucks, as a landowner, I’d want to participate in those.  And it looks like from this Penn State Extension piece– which interviewed actual forest landowners- that their access to carbon markets is limited by… access to professional foresters.

After I read this compelling write-up from the USDA on landowners accessing climate markets getting  $145 mill,

and in August, this $15 mill

Funded projects:

• Appalachian Carbon Exchange – $1,998,270 (Kentucky, West Virginia)
• Bonneville Environmental Foundation – $1,905,797 (Oregon, Washington)
• Collaborative Earth Institute – $2,000,000 (Texas)
• Croatan Institute – $1,920,019 (North Carolina, Tennessee)
• National Wildlife Federation – $1,938,771 (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina)
• Prairie View A&M University – $1,516,449 (Texas)
• Shelterwood Collective – $1,944,837 (California)
• South Carolina Rural Water Association – $102,285 (South Carolina)
• Urban Forest Carbon Registry – $1,763,109 (Georgia, Illinois, Ohio)

It does make you a bit curious as to why Pennsylvania landowners seem like they are already using carbon markets.  Maybe it would be easier to fund more Extension positions in those states? It seems like in Pennsylvania that’s their job- to help landowners figure out how to access carbon markets and feed difficulties up the food chain.

but USDA is big into carbon markets (not just forest):

This announcement complements ongoing efforts at USDA to facilitate farmer, rancher, and private forest landowner participation in voluntary carbon markets, including implementing the Growing Climate Solutions Act. In addition, these efforts contribute to advancing the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to its Principles for Responsible Participation in Voluntary Carbon Markets, aimed at informing robust standards for carbon credit supply and demand; improving market functioning; ensuring fair and equitable treatment of all participants and advancing environmental justice, including fair distribution of revenue; and instilling market confidence.

This announcement also advances the Justice40 Initiative, which sets the goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal climate, clean energy, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution, including tribes, rural areas, and urban communities. These investments also support the America the Beautiful initiative, which is supporting voluntary, locally led conservation efforts across the country.

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But back to the Climate Trust grants, see the $5 million to the ERAS.

Hazard tree removal? Fuel reduction treatments? vexar for Wisconsin seedlings?  Why not give the $ to the states, who already provide seedlings to private forest landowners?  It almost sounds like if the word “climate” is in front of it, then the same old practices don’t have to go through the usual Federal and State processes, composed of people who already know what they are doing. It’s almost like creating a separate structure for all the work that forest folks have traditionally done.

I would like to propose a suggestion to help with equity and income inequality… let’s design USG programs to go as directly as possible to people doing the work, whether private landowner or Tribe, for the S&PF branch, or to the folks doing actual on-the-ground work in the field.  Let’s streamline application processes so we don’t need the USG to give grants to other organizations to hire helpers (Community Navigators) to fill out the paperwork for grants; work with NRCS and the States serving the very same landowners to simplify, and beef up contracting in NFS to ensure competition and accountability.  It was nice to stuff lotsa bucks in NGOs for IRA and BIL, and now that it’s stashed it’s available to spend over a longer time period, but over the longer term it seems like taxpayers are paying for lots of pass-through that we don’t need.  And if there’s $, let’s make sure that more of it goes to the people doing the work.