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The impact of climate change in the Pacific Northwest
“Instead of feeling overwhelmed, it helps focus on the things we can control. To address climate change, we need to reduce our emissions and increase carbon sequestration. Forterra’s approach is two-fold: restoring our ecosystems, which are natural carbon sinks, and facilitating sustainable new development that both builds social equity and has a smaller carbon footprint.
“Through our community real estate program, we apply our expertise in negotiation, financing, and entitlement to support local communities in fostering well-being. One example of this is cross-laminated timber (CLT), a wood panel product made by gluing together layers of lumber stacked in alternating perpendicular directions. CLT reduces the cost of construction to make homes more affordable, creates new jobs in struggling rural communities, enhances forest health and stores more carbon when paired with sustainable harvesting. Learn about our work with a CLT modular prototype here…”
Climate change is here. Nature-based solutions can help.
Openlands works across the Chicago metropolitan region to advance nature-based solutions to climate change, improve the health and well-being of communities, and create a more verdant region for all.
Learn more about [their] work and how you can get involved to help make a more sustainable, equitable region with Openlands…
Openlands strategic plan
Openlands’ vision for the region is a landscape that includes a vast network of land and water trails, tree-lined streets, and intimate public gardens within easy reach of every city dweller. It also includes parks and preserves big enough to provide natural habitat and to give visitors a sense of the vast prairies, woodlands, and wetlands that were here before the cities. In sum, Openlands believes that protected open space is critical for the quality of life of our region.
Exploring carbon sequestration
“[They] are following the model from other land trusts. There is a cost for land trusts to manage forests for increased carbon sequestration. [They] aren’t a commercial forestry operation and need revenue in order to manage forests.
Carbon offsets and the carbon market can provide resources for land trusts to restore large commercial forest landscapes, and support the ongoing cost of stewardship and restoration that a land trust is responsible for.
Whatcom Land Trust would only take on a carbon sequestration project that supports our mission, improves the forest ecosystem, and sequesters more carbon than it would otherwise…”
Video: Unpacking 30×30 for Sonoma County
The Land Trust is playing a key role in helping the state and nation achieve the 30×30 goal through purchase of land and stewardship of 17 nature preserves managed for biodiversity conservation, and most of their conservation easements which were originally identified for their unique biological value.
Sonoma Land Trust and 30×30
“California has joined over 72 countries, including the United States, in setting a goal of conserving 30% of our lands and coastal waters by 2030. Achieving this goal will allow California to protect biodiversity, expand equitable access to nature, and build resilience to climate change. Scientists warn that we must meet the 30×30 goal to avoid the worst impacts of a warming planet.
“From the San Pablo baylands, through the Marin Coast-Blue Ridge Critical Linkage, and into the Russian River watershed, Sonoma Land Trust has projects and programs focused on our most threatened species and habitat areas. Sonoma Land Trust is playing a key role in helping the state and the nation achieve the 30×30 goal through the purchase of land and stewardship of our 17 nature preserves managed for biodiversity conservation and most of our conservation easements which were originally identified for their unique biological value….”
Douglas County sheep farm working to restore soil and build community, agrivoltaics
“Co-locating farming and clean energy production on agricultural land creates rural economic resiliency, provides land access for new and underserved farmers, and builds vital agricultural infrastructure. Unlocking these bottlenecks will create food security that allows small farmers to compete in a global extractive market while focusing on restorative farming practices that heal the land”…
Continental Wildways
Sustaining biodiversity requires a big-picture vision. Our projects are strategically positioned across Canada, the United States and Mexico to preserve nature at a continental scale.
Using the principles of conservation biology, our founders identified the core native wildlife habitat areas and the corridors that connect them. We call them Wildways. This innovative concept has fundamentally shaped conservation projects across North America.
A bold initiative
The Western New York Land Conservancy is leading an effort to create the WNY Wildway, an ambitious long-term plan to protect and connect the largest of their region’s remaining forests. The Wildway will connect the vast forests of northern Pennsylvania to the Great lakes, through to the Finger Lakes, the Adirondacks, and beyond. It will form part of the Eastern Wildway which runs all the way from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
The Wildway will allow plants and animals to roam across the land as they once did, to move as climate changes, and to expand their ranges and ensure their survival. It will allow wildlife that have disappeared from their region to return home.
You can learn more, and perhaps draw inspiration for your own region, by viewing their “story map” which provides images as well as text to convey the challenges and solutions.
Largest urban forest carbon credit purchase to support conserving land
The largest urban forest carbon credit sale in the nation, as of 2021, will support land conservation in the southwestern Pennsylvania region by Allegheny Land Trust.
This significant purchase increases the capacity of the land trust to conserve and care for more crucial green space in southwestern Pennsylvania…