Owned by the Fred M. van Eck Forest Foundation, the Van Eck Forest is a working redwood forest conserved and managed by the Pacific Forest Trust to increase carbon stores, restore biodiversity and old growth qualities and provide habitat for endangered species. In addition to helping cool the climate, the Van Eck Forest Project helps protect wildlife habitat, safeguard clean water and sustain rural communities and jobs for the benefit of all Californians.

The Van Eck Forest Project will permanently reduce approximately 500,000 tons of CO2 emissions over a 100-year period by ensuring use of sustainable forestry practices that sequester more carbon than could be attained through conventional management. The project is the first emissions reductions project registered and independently certified under the rigorous accounting standards adopted by the California Air Resources Board to help the state meet its ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals.

The Pacific Forest Trust holds a working forest conservation easement on the Van Eck Forest, ensuring the land will never be lost to development, converted to other uses or logged in an unsustainable manner.

The Pacific Forest Trust's model stewardship of the Van Eck Forest is proving working forests can help cool the climate if they're managed to achieve increased carbon stocks.

Forests like Van Eck provide climate benefits by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it as carbon in trees for hundreds of years or longer. As compared to reforestation or afforestation, established working forests are especially effective at storing carbon as they grow older due to the fact they store substantially greater volumes of carbon over a shorter time than do their younger counterparts.

California’s Forest Protocols – developed over a four-year period with the participation of scientists, foresters and climate experts – ensure that carbon dioxide emissions reductions (ERs) generated from working forests meet international standards.

The Forest Protocols set the rules for calculating emissions reductions from project activities that are additional to what the forest would normally provide by measuring these against a clear and consistent baseline of standard forestry activity. Further, the Protocols provide assurances that the emissions reductions will be permanent by securing the forest practices with a conservation easement and verifying reductions by third-party certification.

In addition to the climate benefits Van Eck delivers, sustainable timber harvests on the property provide the building industry and consumers with eco- and climate-friendly wood products.

Maps

Northern California Coast The Van Eck Forest parcels are located northeast of the cities of Arcata and Eureka

Lindsay Creek Parcel With development right on its eastern border, the Van Eck Forest Lindsay Creek parcel demonstrates both the threat to, and potential of, forests' climate benefits.