Oregon’s leaders decided for the first time to dedicate an entire state forest to storing harmful greenhouse gases to combat climate change while generating revenue from selling carbon credits.
The fate of the Elliott State Forest near Coos Bay has been the subject of intense negotiation for years, but on Tuesday morning the three members of the State Land Board – Gov. Tina Kotek, Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade and state Treasurer Tobias Read – voted unanimously to support a proposed forest management plan for the Elliott’s future that prioritizes research, protecting animal habitat, increasing forest carbon storage to combat climate change and produce income from the sale of carbon credits. Logging would still be allowed in parts of the forest, but would be significantly reduced from previous decades.
The decision makes Oregon the second state nationwide to enroll an entire state forest in a plan focused on storing harmful emissions in exchange for carbon credits, after Michigan.
In Oregon, the forest management plan includes registering all 83,000 acres of the Elliott in the voluntary carbon crediting market to generate millions of dollars for the state. Voluntary markets are not tied to any government-regulated emissions reduction laws, such as California’s cap-and-trade program, or Washington’s cap-and-invest program.
Approval of the plan has been a long time coming, and Vicki Walker, director of the Department of State Lands, visibly choked up as she presented it to the board in Salem. “From a deeply conflicted past we have and continue to move towards the future that this plan represents: The Elliott as a nationally important center for forest science and management that also contributes to the things we value – conservation, education, recreation and the economies right here in Oregon and the south coast,” she said.
Not everyone supports the idea. Last year, two of the Elliott’s planning partners – Oregon State University and the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians – backed out of partnering on the project, citing concerns that putting the entire forest into a carbon storage and crediting scheme would limit research and logging. Department officials said they are in ongoing talks with OSU and the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians to continue finding a way to collaborate.
Officials at the Department of State Lands anticipate that the plan will go into effect next year, following finalization of a habitat conservation plan currently being reviewed by federal agencies. The forest management plan will allow a resumption of some logging for the first time in eight years. State land officials will soon ink an agreement with the carbon crediting company Anew Climate to manage the planning and brokerage of the carbon storage and crediting scheme for the forest.
