Garcia River Forest Climate Action Project: 
Restoring Forests to Reduce Climate Change

In 2004, The Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund acquired 23,780 acres of heavily-cut forest property on California’s north coast to restore important habitat and to help reduce climate change.

Over its 100 year lifetime, The Nature Conservancy estimates that the Garcia River Forest project will absorb and store 4.2 million metric tons carbon dioxide by ensuring high forest growth rates and the development of larger and denser stands of Redwood and Douglas fir.

Following the robust scientific measurement, quantification and monitoring protocols established by the California Climate Action Registry (CCAR), the Garcia River Forest Project demonstrates that forest restoration can achieve verifiable emissions reductions by sequestering carbon in forests.

Conservation Significance and Benefits

In addition to capturing and storing carbon, the restoration of this commercial forest land is:

• Restoring Redwood-Douglas fir forest ecosystems on a landscape scale, conserving one-third of this important California coastal watershed;
• Rehabilitating the watershed and improving water quality;
• Protecting regional biodiversity by restoring habitats critical to endangered spotted owl and coho salmon, as well as numerous other birds, plants, mammals and other species of salmon;
• Demonstrating the compatibility of working forests with climate change protection by contributing timber and jobs to the local community; and
• Establishing a site for ground-breaking research on estimating above-ground forest carbon and monitoring biodiversity conservation on working forests.

In early 2007, the first light-touch logging took place on Garcia River. This method of timber harvesting maximizes carbon storage and accelerates the recovery of the forest ecosystem by individually selecting inferior trees for removal, promoting the growth of stronger trees. Through this process, the local mill received 350,000 board feet of timber, the first time in seven years that the Garcia Forest contributed to the local economy.

Validating and Monitoring Emissions Reduction

The CCAR forest project protocols—the most prescriptive set of standards for forest management carbon projects in the world — establish a standardized baseline by determining how much logging would be legally allowed under California Forest Practice Rules. The results of the light-touch logging at the Garcia River Forest are compared to this standardized baseline to determine the carbon benefits of the project.

Initial carbon estimates are verified by an independent third party certifier. Then, annual monitoring of the project area is required by CCAR to ensure that the projected carbon actually is stored. Garcia River Forest sequestered 77,000 tons per year from 2005-2007 and will sequester 88,000 tons per year through 2017. The annual amount sequestered varies over time as the forest is sustainably managed.

The project was fully verified by CCAR in February, 2008, following its approval of the third-party verification report prepared by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS). SCS also certifies the property for environmental integrity and sustainable forest practices under the rigorous Forest Stewardship Council system.

As required by the CCAR rules, the Conservancy holds a conservation easement on the property to ensure that it remains forest land through the project’s 100-year life and beyond into perpetuity. Even if the property is sold, it will remain forest land forever.

Forest Carbon: A Credible and Critical Climate Change Solution

Forest carbon projects, such as Garcia River Forest, demonstrate that forest carbon is an effective and feasible part of an overall solution to climate change.

The Nature Conservancy believes that effective international and U.S. climate change policy frameworks must:

• Achieve significant reductions in emissions from all major sources;
• Create incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and to absorb carbon from the atmosphere by conservation-based forest management and forest restoration; and
• Support adaptation strategies that help the natural world cope with the impacts of climate change.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © CJ Hudlow (mouth of the Garcia River); Photo © CJ Hudlow (monitoring forest health).