Lend Your Land: Join the Carbon Forest Project
WANT A LEGACY THAT WILL LAST FOREVER?
The Carbon Forest Project is looking for someone with 10+ acres who wants to help us all to learn permanent carbon sequestration and old-growth forest restoration.
Richard Powers, author of the Overstory, in this Ezra Klein podcast said this:
“… when I first went to the Smokies and hiked up into the old growth in the Southern Appalachians, it was like somebody threw a switch. There was some odd filter that had just been removed, and the world sounded different and smelled different. And I could see how elevated the species count was. And it was a moving moment for me, as an Easterner, to stand up there and to say, this is what an Eastern forest looks like. This is what a healthy, fully-functioning forest looks like. And I’m 56 years old, and I’d never seen it.”
In 1620, almost all of the Eastern half of the United States was covered with old-growth forests. These forests were places of vibrant, biodiverse ecosystems that helped keep the entire planet cool and fresh. Today 95% of those forests are gone, with some replaced by forests that have been logged two or more times. The forest’s ability to sequester carbon and mitigate devastating forest fires and species loss has gone with them. Is it possible we could bring large parts of these forests back?
While powerful efforts are going into permanently preserving the remnants of our old-growth forests, applied ecologist John Munro is creating a path towards a restoration of old-growth forests at scale – reviving a healthy native biome. Munro has spent decades designing, planning, and planting land and waterway restoration projects.
Munro and the recently formed Carbon Forest Project Committee have created a plan and begun a search for the first ten-acre demonstration project. The land would be placed under protective permanent easement prohibiting logging. They propose that the land be planted with hardwoods and other flora that over time would recreate an old-growth forest. They are working on securing major grant funding and donations for this ecological restoration. The designated land would provide excellent carbon sequestration and wildlife habitat.
Standard practice after logging has been to let whatever remains on the ground grow, or to install tree tube plantings that are not managed. In contrast, the Carbon Forest Project’s plan takes fallow ground and plants a landscape that will have historic forest character. The Carbon Forest Project will plant eastern mixed hardwood deciduous trees suited to the topography, soils, and moisture of the land, with a planting density that should provide canopy cover in 30 or more years. These trees provide food for wildlife. They sequester carbon much more densely than softwoods. A few southern species that appear to be moving northward with climate change will also be planted.
Mixed hardwood forest floor – Jacobsburg, PA
Likewise, understory species such as ferns and blueberries or wildflowers along with the symbiotic fungi will be part of the Carbon Forest, for the species in the forest floor and below steward the ecosystem’s resources.
In light of recent and continuing huge wildfires in Canada, an article in Politico points out that old-growth forests are much less likely to burn than younger ones. Another relevant point is that hardwood forests are much less likely to burn than the evergreen forests in Canada -- evergreens have highly flammable resins in needles and bark.
The Carbon Forest Project will partner with like-minded organizations and expects to work with land conservancies to set up and maintain permanent easements.
This planned forest is a prototype; it has been designed to be scalable. The basic design could be used on 10 or 100 times the original 10-acre parcel.
Demonstrating this type of restoration could set the US – and the world -- on a new path to restoring small portions of these primordial biomes.
The Carbon Forest Project has been established under the auspices of the Unami Friends Meeting of Pennsburg, PA, under its 501c (3) tax-exempt designation, to carry out the Carbon Forest vision.
Would you – or someone you know – like to provide the land?
The detailed concept, as described in the Carbon Forest Project Primer for Project Partners is available here.
Eastern & Western old-growth Forests
Will provide soon:
Carbon Forest Project website (to launch)