I LOVE THAT AMERICAN FORESTS can take direct action for our vision and values through tree planting and other forest restoration. From expanding urban forests in places like Detroit and Miami to restoring mountain forests across landscapes like the Sierra Nevada and Central Appalachians, we are playing a key role in creating healthy and resilient forests across cities and landscapes alike. One perk of my job is participating in events around the country where I get to experience this important work firsthand and get some dirt under my fingernails.

With such tangible on-the- ground accomplishments, it might surprise you that I am equally proud of the way American Forests is using its voice to call on everyone — government leaders, the public, businesses and fellow nonprofits — to do much more for our forests. In fact, American Forests is making major new investments to build the power of our voice to match the power of our hands. Let me explain why and how.

Throughout our proud history, American Forests has played a key role as the pathfinder for the forest movement, identifying the key threats to our forests and bringing leaders and organizations together to find lasting solutions. One example is the passage of the National Forest Management Act of 1976, which still governs how we manage our national forests today. With intense pressures and conflicting interests on all sides of the issue, American Forests convened the interested parties and built the consensus that was the basis for the act.

Today, our country needs this kind of centrist, galvanizing leadership more urgently than ever. Building from recent successes, American Forests has positioned ourselves into our most powerful policy leadership role in decades. Consider:

• Last year, we concluded a decade of work with partners to secure a desperately needed legislative fix for the U.S. Forest Service’s wildfire budget. This will deliver millions more each year to prevent and fight wildfire and preserve funding for other important Forest Service programs that had routinely been tapped for wildfire funding shortfalls.
• As the lead forestry partner for the U.S. Climate Alliance, we are now guiding 25 U.S. states, as of August 2019, in developing new policies to protect forests from climate change impacts and increase natural carbon capture in forests and wood products.
• American Forests is widely recognized as the lead advocacy organization working to secure federal funding for urban forests, and we just secured U.S. House approval of the most significant increase in the U.S Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forest Program since the program began in 1990.
• This year, we helped to develop and introduce new federal legislation to permanently double the amount of funding allocated to replanting our national forests after wildfire, pest outbreaks and other events.

This vital leadership is supported by our largest policy staff in at least a decade, reflecting our renewed commitment to policy as the primary pathway to scale our mission by empowering the work of others.

While the ability to persuade policy-makers is one key aspect of finding our voice and creating change, another is the ability to change hearts and minds on a much more fundamental level. Too often it feels like the power and importance of forests is given short shrift, like trees are just scenery rather than fundamental infrastructure for our lives. If we can fundamentally change how America views its forests, we can advance our mission in many different ways.

Our success in this area has been most striking with our call for Tree Equity in America’s cities. American Forests has provided the clarion call to fix the unacceptable current reality that tree cover in cities regularly tracks income, and in many cases tracks race in ways that transcend income. That means the people who most need the benefits of trees in cities, like capturing air pollution and cooling homes that lack air conditioning, are least likely to have these vital benefits.

With our call for Tree Equity, American Forests is framing this serious shortcoming in stark language of moral imperative, clearly defining success, and bringing a new urgency to the work of urban forestry. Our success in changing the conversation is reflected in our policy progress and the rapidly growing universe of financial support and partners we are finding for our urban forest work. By naming the problem and solution with unusual clarity and impact, we are paving the way to actually achieving Tree Equity.

When you pull it all together, it comes down to how we define success. The easy road for American Forests would be to count our successes in trees planted, something we can easily control and measure. But we know that true success in achieving our mission must include actions across our nation that go beyond our direct control — leading by example as well as inspiring and empowering others to help carry this work forward. Thanks for your role in helping make this possible.

For more news and updates from Jad, follow him on Twitter @JadDaley

The post Offshoots: Finding Our Voice for America’s Forests appeared first on American Forests.

PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE Hilary Franz has a family farm in Pierce County, Wash. that hosts a habitat of uncommonly situated Ponderosa pine. Or, perhaps it’s because she’s stewarded a third-generation farm on Bainbridge Island, Wash. Either way, Hilary Franz’s ties to the land have resulted in a fierce fighting spirit for conservation and strong rural economies.

Endorsed by her retiring predecessor and with support from a coalition of environmental groups and labor associations, Franz was successfully elected as Washington state’s Commissioner of Public Lands in 2016, and has been boldly leading the charge to “safeguard the environment, values and support local economies” since taking office. Along with that, she has also constructed an unprecedented 20-year strategic plan for restoring forest health and reducing wildfire risk in central and eastern Washington.

As Commissioner, Franz protects and manages nearly 6 million acres of public lands in Washington State — from coastal waters and aquatic reserves, to working forests and farms, to commercial developments and recreation areas. As the leader of the state’s wildfire fighting force, Franz has seen firsthand the damaging effects of severe wildfires, and she is not sitting idly by.

“Hot, dry conditions coupled with diseased and dying forests are leading to explosive wildfires, which threaten our communities and fill our summer skies with smoke,” says the Washington State Department of Natural Resources web- site. Franz, insisting that wildfire is “not an eastside or westside problem, an urban or rural problem,” called on the state to present a strong start to a solution. Then, she went many steps further.

“Wildfire is a problem for all of Washington,” says Franz. “That is why we developed an ‘all lands, all hands’ approach, one that calls for urgent, transformative change in how our state confronts wildfire.”

In this she involves everyone — from federal agencies all the way down to those who own just a few acres of wooded property — with particular involvement from some 33 organizations and agencies who together created the state’s 20-Year Forest Health Strategic Plan.

For her leadership in crafting this strategic plan, she was presented with American Forests’ first ever Forest Resilience Champion Award.

“The plan’s development was intentionally designed to engage a diverse range of partners that are committed to continuing to work together to implement cross-boundary solutions,” she says.

Grounded in science and setting an ambitious goal of restoring 1.25 million acres of forest to healthy conditions, increasing fire resilience, and better protecting communities, the plan calls for active management using techniques like prescribed burns and thinning.

Some specifics of the plan call for removing small tree overcrowding, increasing demand for small-diameter timber (trees too small or too far from mills), and using biomass (by-products of forest management activities) — like creating pellets for wood stoves — which also reduces energy costs for consumers. The plan even kick-started a bioenergy pilot project, supported by Washington’s Department of Natural Resources, which helped Washington’s Northport School District install a wood pellet boiler to heat its school a first of its kind project in the state.

Franz is also leading the push to make Washington’s lands resilient in the face of climate change by investing in carbon sequestration and clean energy, like wind, solar and geothermal infrastructure.

An overarching goal for Franz is to enhance economic development through the implementation of forest restoration and management strategies that maintain and attract private sector investments and employment in rural communities. This is because Franz believes that forest health, wildfire risk and rural economic development are inextricably linked.

“Our rural communities, and all people in Washington state, benefit from well-managed, resilient forest ecosystems that provide timber products, natural resource and recreation jobs, wildlife habitat, clean water and many other important ecosystem services and social values,” says Franz.

In addition, Franz and her department have made grants available for forest organizations to work toward these goals.

“For every $1 million spent on forest restoration there is $5.7 million generated in economic returns,” she says.

According to Franz, “Improving the health of our forests benefits almost every aspect of our lives. Forests provide for strong rural economies and jobs. Forests enrich us through recreation and solitude. Forests protect our water supplies and provide important habitat for fish and wildlife. Moreover, healthy forests reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfires that threaten communities and the forests we value. There has never been more urgency to address forest health in Washington.”

Kate Michael writes from Washington, D.C. and is a lifestyle editor and publisher.

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THE SACRAMENTO MOUNTAINS of southern New Mexico are known as “sky islands” — isolated, high-elevation refuges surrounded by “seas” of range and desert. The transition between the hot, flat, arid basin floor and the high rugged mountains is striking. Sierra Blanca — the highest peak in the range at 11,981 feet — rises more than 5,533 feet above the valley bottom. Elevation changes everything — in the span of a few miles, cactus and grasslands give way to dense, moss-covered evergreens.

Between 1984 and 2008, wildfires and bark beetle epidemics killed one out of every five trees in the American Southwest. Scientists believe that the region is already warmer than it has been at any time in the past 1,000 years. Widespread tree death will continue as the climate becomes drier and hotter.

Because of their unique topography, sky island mountain ranges present one of our best opportunities to conserve forests in the region.

Foresters from the Lincoln National Forest and the Mescalero Apache Tribe, who share management of the Sacramentos, are grappling with ways to help the ecosystem adapt to the changing climate. The stakes are high as many of the unique plants and animals that live in these mountains will have nowhere to go if forests disappear.

In June 2012, the Little Bear Fire scorched 44,330 acres at the northern tip of the mountain range, burning 242 homes and making it the most destructive fire in state history.

The fire killed all adult trees across many parts of the landscape, hampering the forest’s ability to re-seed itself. Seven years later, grasses and shrubs are the only plant life in the most severely burned areas. The absence of young trees is a troubling sign. As we lose forest cover, we also lose vital ecosystem functions. Compared to grasslands and shrub fields, healthy forests store more carbon, provide habitat for more kinds of wildlife, and have deeper root systems that allow rainfall to seep into the soil.

Trees are especially important for protecting water supplies in the south-west. Most of the annual rainfall in the region occurs in brief, violent storms that can cause erosion and dangerous flash flooding. This is especially true when  combined with charred, water-repellent soils left after wildfires. After the Little Bear Fire, summer rains scoured the burned hillsides and washed ash and debris into Bonito Lake. The reservoir provided 60 percent of the drinking water for Alamogordo (pop. 31,248), a city nestled at the base of the mountains.

Last year, American Forests worked with the Lincoln National Forest to plant 10,000 trees — Ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, and Southwestern white pine — in watersheds around Bonito Lake. This year, we are collaborating to restore another area that burned in 2002, with the goal of slowing erosion and gullying around several springs and waterways.

Planting is just one part of an ambitious restoration effort being undertaken by the U.S. Forest Service to help these unique and threatened forests survive in a hotter, dryer climate. American Forests is proud to be their partner and lend our support.

Austin Rempel writes from Washington, D.C., and is American Forests’ forest restoration manager.

The post Project Showcase: Reforesting the Sky Islands of New Mexico appeared first on American Forests.

IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN the allure of Camp Small. Tucked into the northern edge of dense Baltimore, piles of stacked logs loom precariously overhead as you wind into its depths. For generations, this sort yard has collected the city’s removed street and park trees.

It’s not that Baltimore takes down more trees than other cities. Many others just take the chips or logs to a dump where their value rots away and stored carbon leaks into the atmosphere. Believe it or not, more wood is removed from America’s urban forests than the entire U.S. National Forest System. Baltimore alone adds 8,000 to 14,000 tons to Camp Small every year from trees that fall in storms or are removed for safety reasons.

Seeing such potential in one place can change a person.

This stockpile has haunted me since my first stint at American Forests in 2000, spearheading what would become the Baltimore Center for Green Careers. It wasn’t until the City launched its Camp Small Zero Waste Initiative in 2016 that an opportunity finally emerged. The Office of Sustainability and Department of Recreation and Parks’ Division of Forestry created a unique city-owned enterprise that processes and sells this endless flow of wood to the public.

American Forests, with support from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, helped launch this enterprise by providing a portable sawmill and kiln to process the wood. Camp Small has quickly transitioned from being a drain on city budgets to profitability. Room and Board, a modern furniture store headquartered in Minnesota, is even exploring its lumber for their “Urban Wood Project: Baltimore” sustainable furniture line, which currently uses deconstructed building wood thanks to the U.S. Forest Service. One such bookshelf sits proudly in my home.

With the supply chain established, we shifted to creating a local venture that turns Camp Small wood into high-concept products and career pathways for youth. Our first stop was the woodshop at Carver Vocational Tech High School. Greg McDevitt is the sort of grizzled woodworking teacher of 20 years whose envy of the school’s lavish culinary program out his window could become a Wes Anderson movie. But, it doesn’t take long to see the passion and pride for his students’ creations.

When Bryant “Spoon” Smith, CEO of this new venture, and I first proposed the idea of partnering to create a self-sustaining enterprise with his students, McDevitt paused and looked closely at me.

“You’re kinda crazy, aren’t you?” I didn’t know what to say. Then, he nodded with a wry grin, “I like that.”

The missing ingredient was a visionary designer. Enter: Jason Nogoy of Crafthouse Design. A Los Angeles-based architect by training, Nogoy has worked around the world designing festival venues, elegant wood décor, and immersive youth experiences.

This team will integrate modern designs with art to build a dynamic “Earth Instinct” brand. We’ll work with communities to restore some of Baltimore’s 16,000 vacant lots as meaningful green spaces. We’ll even buy Mr. McDevitt a heavy-duty wood planer for his students, and maybe show that fancy culinary program a thing or two.

Ian Leahy writes from Washington, D.C., and is American Forests’ vice president of urban forestry.

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EXCITING TIMES are on the horizon: American Forests and Eddie Bauer are celebrating our Silver Anniversary, as well as Eddie Bauer’s Centenary. Next year marks not only Eddie Bauer’s 100-year anniversary, it is also the 25th year of their partnership with American Forests. The partnership has led to the planting of more than 8 million trees across North America, a tremendous feat.

Last year, Eddie Bauer launched #WhyIHike, a campaign geared towards encouraging people to share their inspiration for getting outdoors while also motivating them to learn about the environment and help preserve it for future generations.

“Together, we are able to bring greater awareness to causes we believe in, open the conversation with customers, and connect the idea of conservation to the consumer’s enjoyment of forests and outdoor spaces,” says Eddie Bauer President Damien Huang.

For year two of #WhyIHike, Eddie Bauer decided to kick off Earth Month by investing in the restoration of a critical, yet often overlooked, outdoor recreation opportunity, the urban forest. American Forests, who has been pioneering in the urban forestry field for more than a century, was a natural fit for bringing their goals to fruition.

On Saturday, April 15th, Eddie Bauer employees and customers joined residents of Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb, to plant nearly 40 trees along streets and other paved areas. These trees will improve air quality, intercept and filter rainfall for clean urban waters, and keep the area 5 to 7 degrees cooler on hot summer days.

Following the planting, volunteers then joined Emily Okallau, community outreach coordinator for the Chicago Region Trees Initiative, on an urban hike, just miles from downtown Chicago to learn about the critical role trees in and around cities play for health, sustainability and livability of residents.

“Eddie Bauer is investing in the type of recreational opportunities we want to create, providing extra emphasis on making nature accessible to everyone, including people in urban areas,” said Jad Daley, president and CEO of American Forests. “The only bad hike is a hike you never took. Urban forests allow people to find their adventure wherever they might be.”

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GROWING UP in Southern California, from an early age, Ara Erickson’s roots were tied to nature.

“Some of my strongest memories are of climbing through tree branches and playing on swing sets under trees,” Erickson says. “In the heat of Southern California, the shade of a tree is really important.”

But, it wasn’t just her early connection to nature that drove her desire to help protect the environ- ment. Erickson grew up in a family that understood and appreciated that humans and nature must coexist in a mutually beneficial way.

“I had an essence instilled in me at a young age of the importance of both wild and managed parts of nature,” she says. “That has always been a strong part of the core of who I am.”

Erickson’s childhood and upbringing influenced her decision to study the disciplines of forestry and resource management in college, where she was drawn to the complexity of under- standing that humans must live on this planet and rely on its resources but still respect those resources.

In a world that looks for black and white solutions, Erickson, who serves as the director for Weyerhaeuser’s corporate sustainability program, now finds herself professionally pursuing those grey areas. In fact, aligning with an organization willing to also grapple with that complexity is why she got involved personally with American Forests.

“It’s rare to find an organization who can live the mantra that ‘all forests can provide some type of benefit, but not all forests provide the same benefit’,” she says. “Organizations that can take that message to the masses are really important.”

In July, Erickson joined American Forests’ Board of Directors to help tackle the biggest challenges facing our forests.

“I cannot think of another organization that has both the internal intellectual capacity and such alignment with the mission to make sure there are forests forever, for a lot of different people, types of communities and types of needs,” Erickson says. “It’s an organization that spans everything from urban trees — and things like tree equity to ensure that people have access to urban forests wherever they live and whoever they are — all the way to more wild landscapes where restoration and reforestation really need to take place. Being able to work with an organization that spans that whole spectrum, and is willing to tackle some of those really tough grey zones, is why I’ve been inspired by American Forests. I am thrilled to be working alongside the organization.”

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Rose Tileston, Manager of Urban Forest Programs

DUTCH ELM DISEASE (DED) is known as one of the most lethal shade tree diseases in the United States. To date, it has killed hundreds of thou- sands of elm trees across the country. Chicago is one of the cities that has experienced a significant loss of elm trees to this disease. In response, scientists at The Morton Arboretum worked for decades to create a hybrid elm that could withstand DED. Today, we now have the Triumph elm thanks to their hard work.

This spring, American Forests partnered with The Morton Arboretum’s Chicago Region Trees Initiative to plant trees in the village of Elmwood Park. Thanks to sponsorship from Enablon, we were able to help restore the area’s urban tree canopy with several different tree species, including elm. We gathered at Elmwood Park Bible Church where we met Pastor Sean Stevenson, who was delighted that we would be planting an elm tree in front of his church. As we worked under gloomy skies, attempting to plant 25 trees before the rain would set in, Dino Braglia, director of public works for the Village of Elmwood Park, shared with us how as a child, he had watched the elm trees in Elmwood Park die. He spoke about how meaningful it was to him to be a part of replacing those trees so that future generations could enjoy and experience the beauty of an elm tree. We finished our tree planting with students from Elmwood Elementary School. The students learned how to plant trees, and we triumphantly planted an elm that they could all watch grow, together.

The post From the Field: Chicago appeared first on American Forests.

Jennifer Broome, Vice President of Philanthropy

IN JUNE, American Forests partnered with DTE Energy to host the “Deep Roots Detroit” Sustainability Tour for select attendees of the Sustainable Brands conference. American Forests was a major sponsor of the conference, which was held in Detroit, a city where American Forests has deep roots. In fact, American Forests has been working in Detroit since 2006 to improve the city’s urban canopy and leverage trees to improve equity across the city.

The tour included three stops, each a unique example of community-based sustainability efforts. The first stop was the El Moore Lodge and Gardens, an example of sustainable urban living. This circa-1848 building has been sustainably restored and is now home to residential apartments and guest suites, as well as beautiful gardens and an aviary.

The second stop on the tour was an innovative tree nursery that American Forests created on vacant land. This pioneering model for reclaiming vacant urban spaces means more tree canopy for Detroiters, a sustainable source of trees for the city, and rewarding careers for local residents.

The final stop was a visit to Detroit Vineyards, the only urban winery in the country, which makes superior wines in the heart of Detroit using grapes grown within the city’s limits. Not only is this winery using sustain- able practices, it’s located in a refurbished ice cream factory, and trains locals to plant and harvest grapes on their property, providing an additional income stream for Detroiters.

American Forests received many accolades for hosting this unique tour as part of the conference.

“I just loved the idea of getting out into Detroit to see sustainable efforts helping to relaunch this city,” said one participant. “The diversity of stops that we visited made me feel like I was seeing the real Detroit, instead of just the conference area.”

Connecting good corporate citizens with the citizens of Detroit is just one example of how American Forests’ roots run deep.

*Attending #VERGE19? Help American Forests plant trees in Oakland on Tuesday 10/22/2019 at 8:30-11:30AM (Sign-up here: http://bit.ly/2qddjnE)

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OUR FORESTS are an important part of the solution to our climate crisis. America’s existing forests and forest products annually sequester and store almost 15 percent of U.S. carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Yet, they have the potential to sequester and store much more.

The Climate Stewardship Act, announced in August by Senator Cory Booker, is the most ambitious legislation in our nation’s history to mobilize America’s forests as a climate change solution. This visionary proposal will plant billions of trees across America, including cities, and is an excellent example of how smart federal investment can dramatically increase the power of forests to naturally capture our carbon emissions. Through the Forestry Title of the bill, Congress would provide the tools and resources to:

• Plant 2.5 billion trees by 2030, and 9.5 billion trees overall, on federal forestlands through the federal Reforestation Trust Fund.
• Plant 1.6 billion trees by 2030, and 6.6 billion overall, on lands owned by states, counties, local government, tribes and nonprofits through a new Reforest America grant program. This includes planting 100 million trees specifically in cities by 2030, and 400 million by 2050, prioritized for low-income communities and communities of color.

Best of all, the Climate Stewardship Act brings everyone on board to help, in cities and rural communities alike, and creates paid employment for the people who need these opportunities most.

The climate impact of these policies would be extraordinary. The newly planted forests would capture enough carbon dioxide emissions to offset more than two full years of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. American Forests’ research team estimates these trees could capture a total of 13.266 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2100. Additional carbon gains of almost 4 billion metric tons will occur after 2100. The power of our forests to help solve our climate crisis is real. At American Forests we are committed to helping policymakers develop policies like these that harness this potential.

The post Washington Outlook: Forests to Help Solve Climate Crisis appeared first on American Forests.

All renderings courtesy of Hickock Cole

Hickok Cole, a forward-focused design practice with offices in Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Va. is currently working with Columbia Property Trust on a vertical addition and extension to an existing seven-story building at 80 M Street SE in D.C. The project will add two full floors of trophy class office space constructed from mass timber, including an occupied penthouse level with roof top terrace and social space. When wood is used as building materials, the CO2 trapped during the growth of the tree remains stored throughout the period of use of the wood product, which may be several hundred years. Of equal importance for our climate, manufacturing these wooden materials uses dramatically less energy than other building materials like steel — further reducing the greenhouse gas footprint of wooden buildings. Upon completion, this project will become the first commercial office building in the District to use mass timber construction.

The post Last Look: Mass Timber Construction appeared first on American Forests.