State Land Board will vote on Elliott State Forest plan to put 83,000 acres into fighting climate change

 

By ALEX BAUMHARDT/Oregon Capital Chronicle

Oregon’s oldest state forest could soon join just a few state forests in the nation that are managed to combat climate change and earn money from selling carbon credits.

The 83,000-acre Elliott State Research Forest near Coos Bay was intensively logged for much of the last century to provide revenue for Oregon schools before transitioning in 2022 into a research forest. Oregon Department of State Lands officials, who are in charge of managing the forest, want the next chapter of the Elliott’s story to be about lowering harmful greenhouse gas emissions by storing carbon dioxide in trees and selling those benefits as carbon credits.

The State Land Board – made up of Gov. Tina Kotek, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade and state Treasurer Tobias Read – will vote Oct. 15 on the plan to manage the forest primarily for forest and habitat health and for its ability to capture and store planet-warming carbon dioxide in exchange for revenue from polluting companies. While state lands officials support the plan, it’s raised concerns among some of the agency’s former forest management collaborators – including Oregon State University and the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians – who fear putting the entire forest into a carbon storage and crediting scheme would limit research and logging.

More than 400 people weighed in on the plan during a public comment period between June 12 and Aug. 4, according to spokespersons from the lands department. A release and analysis of those comments will be available in early September.

Under a proposed 40-year feasibility study developed by the forest carbon and crediting company Anew Climate, the state’s new forest management plan could potentially capture and store up to 435,000 additional metric tons of carbon dioxide – the equivalent of taking about 100,000 gas-powered cars off roads for a year. Each ton would be worth one carbon credit that could be sold to companies to offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions.

The credits could be worth nearly $9 million on carbon markets over the next decade, according to the study from Anew Climate. At the same time, the forest would need to abide by provisions in an 80-year Habitat Conservation Plan the state recently sent to federal agencies for approval to protect critical and endangered species.

Intensive logging, including clear-cutting, would still be allowed on about 25% of the forest, and logging by selective cutting of 80- to 100-year-old trees, considered “eco-forestry” by the state lands department, would be allowed on about 13% of the forest. Portions of the remainder of the forest could be thinned to promote habitat and forest health and biodiversity, but would otherwise be managed primarily for research, animal habitat and carbon storage, not logging, according to the plan.

“The department and the State Land Board are intentionally wanting to focus more on carbon, climate and biodiversity objectives than the Elliott’s past, and at the same time, resume timber harvests,” said Brett Brownscombe, Elliott State Forest transition director at the Department of State Lands. “Part of what we’re looking to do is advance and debate different approaches to forestry so that other types of forest management and other business models can be tested and demonstrated and potentially shape policy on a scale that’s a lot bigger than just the Elliott.”

How it would work

Trees are extraordinary assets when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and old, mature trees are among the best at storing carbon, said Bev Law, a forest scientist and professor emeritus at Oregon State University. In the U.S., forests absorb nearly 12% of total carbon emissions, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Northwest forests are among the best in the world for trapping and storing carbon – and they’re also in demand in the wood products industry.

“It’s some of the most productive ground around for growing trees, whether you cut them or keep them for carbon,” Brownscombe said.

The older the tree, the more carbon it stores. To maximize its storage capacity, trees that are clear cut would be 10 to 15 years older than the average 35- to 40-year-old tree logged in an industrial private forest in Oregon. Law’s research in Oregon and the Northwest has found that allowing the average Douglas fir tree to age to 80 years rather than 40 before being cut could capture and store an additional 25% of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, while Washington state scientists discovered they could store even more. They found that logging trees at 80-years old instead of 40 trapped about 50% more carbon dioxide from the air – and yielded more lumber for the timber industry.

Under the proposed plan, Anew Climate would partner with the state to manage surveying and the accounting of the carbon storage capacity and ensure compliance with the rules of the American Carbon Registry, the first voluntary greenhouse gas registry in the world that works with landowners and with companies pursuing their own emission goals. The registry would issue credits that Anew Climate would help the state sell.

State officials, in partnership with Anew Climate, would submit yearly compliance reports to the American Carbon Registry, and undergo a third-party audit every five years. The audits ensure that the project is on track and that restrictions on logging, tree lifespans and other components of the management plan are being met.

The state is proposing to generate and sell credits on the voluntary carbon crediting market, where companies with their own climate or emission reduction goals, rather than government-mandated emission reduction targets, can buy the credits as offsets. California and Washington have state-run carbon crediting and compliance markets, where companies selling fossil fuels in those states can show a reduction in their emissions, in part, by purchasing state-issued carbon offset credits. Dozens of forestland owners in Oregon and Washington generate and sell carbon credits to the California compliance market. Only Washington land owners can generate and sell credits in Washington’s carbon market.

To participate in California’s market, the state lands department would have to commit to a 100-year carbon crediting plan. Instead, Brownscombe said the state prefers a 40-year commitment, which is the minimum length allowed to enroll a forest in the voluntary market.

In 2023, voluntary markets had about $723 million worth of carbon credit transactions, according to a 2024 report from Ecosystem Marketplace, which tracks the carbon crediting industry. The average credit sold for about $6.50. Globally, transactions in voluntary carbon markets are projected to grow up to $30 billion by 2030, according to Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, a nonprofit carbon crediting industry group.

Opposition to the plan

With state officials moving forward on the plan, key collaborators on the Elliott’s management have stepped back. In November 2023, after five years of work, Oregon State University officials and members of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians bowed out of actively participating in Elliott management. The university’s new president at the time, Jayathi Murthy, cited the carbon crediting scheme in a letter to the State Land Board as one of the reasons for the pullback. OSU officials and the tribes have said they oppose scaling back or ending commercial logging on large swaths of the forest for a set period and worry that the carbon crediting plan would limit research.

University officials declined to be interviewed about the forest. Rob Odom, vice president of university relations, said in a statement that the university is open to collaborating with the state and partnering on future research, provided the Department of State Land resolves the issues brought in the November letter.

“OSU has cautioned that monetizing the carbon within the Elliott State Research Forest in its early stages would limit or interfere with the ability of researchers to conduct meaningful research,” he wrote. “Such research would not be possible if large tracts of the forest are rendered unavailable because they’ve been set aside under long-term (40- or 100-year) commitments through carbon markets that are currently the subject of academic and public scrutiny.”

R.J. Benner, a community information manager for the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, did not provide a comment or interview.

The voluntary carbon crediting market has come under scrutiny in recent years for lacking regulations and oversight to ensure each ton of carbon dioxide released by a polluter is offset by a metric ton absorbed by a landowner. Critics also say they provide only a temporary solution for harmful emissions that cause climate change. After a 40 or 100-year contract for carbon storage has been fulfilled, a landowner could log it all, or use the land for something else. Others worry the markets only delay a necessary transition away from fossil fuels within the next century by letting polluters buy their way out of making urgent changes.

“These markets are one tool out there in the context of forest management, and they’re an evolving one at that,” Brownscombe of the state lands department said. “So we’re going into this with eyes wide open. We want to be part of the evolution of these markets not by standing on the sideline, but by participating in what the current reality is and using that to shape future realities.”

Similar programs

If the plan is approved, the Elliott would be among just a few state forests in the U.S. that are being managed to generate revenue from carbon storage and crediting markets. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources currently has two state forests enrolled in credit markets in projects brokered by Anew Climate. No other state, however, has a public forest fully registered in the American Carbon Registry.

In Oregon, several city and county forests are entered into carbon markets, including 30,000 acres of county forestland in Hood River and 3,700 acres of the Bear Creek Watershed in Astoria. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs has 24,000 acres of forestland set aside for carbon storage and crediting. In Washington, the Department of Natural Resources is considering a plan to set aside 10,000 acres of Western state forests for carbon storage to generate revenue. And the Alaska Legislature recently passed a bill to allow public lands to be leased for management that can generate carbon credits.

Brownscombe said there is a growing momentum around putting public lands into carbon crediting markets that value ecosystem health and that also allow logging. The idea is to create a middle ground in states where the timber industry and conservation groups have long been at odds, and seen their visions for forest management as an all-or-nothing strategy. Brownscombe said the Elliott could be a model for other state forests in Oregon, and for other states.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to show that a middle ground is working somewhere on a large forest landscape like the Elliott? That’s where the Elliott could punch above its 80,000 acre weight,” he said.

• Oregon Capital Chronicle is a nonprofit Salem-based news service that focuses its reporting on Oregon state government, politics and policy. Reporting for this story was supported by the MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship.