Forest Flash: May 2022 - Pacific Forest Trust

FOREST FLASH May 2022

In Pacific Forest Trust’s e-newsletter, Forest Flash, we send you the most recent PFT news and updates on forests, clean water, climate, and wildlife. Subscribe here .

Bring Back the Beaver!

Categorized as a detrimental species (aka “pest”) in California and many other states, beavers have been hunted, trapped, and chased out of much of their home habitats and range. When beavers are gone, we also lose all their benefits for water storage, fire management, and support for other fish and wildlife. Now, California is offering to make amends, proposing a new program to bring beavers back. The current state budget proposal allocates funding for a program at California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to help relocate beavers within their old home range where landowners and managers want to do so. This will begin removing regulatory barriers to landowners restoring beavers to their native habitats and increase public education about beaver benefits. In so doing, California will join Oregon and Washington in offering to help relocate unwanted or “nuisance” beavers to places where they are wanted. PFT has worked with landowners for decades to conserve and restore habitat for beavers and other ecologically beneficial species and is exploring ways to accelerate their population return and relocation to key watershed regions.

Beaver dams on this spring complex helped form extensive wet meadows that reduce fire threats and increase natural water storage.

Beaver dams protected this area of Oregon’s Dixon Creek from the 2021 Bootleg Fire. Credit: Charles Erdman/Trout Unlimited

Nicknamed “system engineers” for their role in managing water flows with small dams, beavers are enormously beneficial and cost-effective for climate resilience, watershed health, and biodiversity. Their water impoundments support wet meadows, slow flood events, create habitat for fish and are enormously impactful in stopping wildfires. This new program will support a concerted effort to “bring back the beaver” in partnership with local, state, and federal agencies, tribes and private landowners.

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California Senate Recommends Essential Investments in Climate Change and Water Security

As the drought gripping the western US intensifies with climate change, some legislatures are turning to the highly cost-effective and multiple-benefit approach of restoring natural watershed functions to increase water reliability. California is a case in point. The state Senate has recommended investing $7.5 billion in various natural infrastructure solutions to drought and water scarcity, with a key focus on conserving and restoring watersheds with conservation partners and willing landowners.

California’s water comes largely from 7 million acres in the far north state, the five watersheds that feed the Sacramento River and provide water to the state’s largest reservoirs: Shasta and Oroville. PFT’s Healthy Watersheds California describes how watersheds impact water supply and quality, and our Risk Assessment outlines how restoration and conservation in watersheds enhances climate resiliency, yields more water, and reduces fire impacts. The Senate recommends $1.5 billion specifically to improve the climate resilience and function of the state’s key watersheds and an additional $1.5 billion to address drought. PFT and a wide range of other stakeholders are urging that $500,000,000 of this be dedicated to a concerted effort in these primary source watersheds. This funding could significantly accelerate investments in natural climate resilience as well as rural sustainability. The multiple and diverse benefits of this approach are mirrored by the multiple stakeholders endorsing this investment and approach.

Expanding a Working Forest Conservation Corridor

Working with landowner TC&I Shasta, LLC and its forest manager Campbell Global, LLC, PFT launched a major new partnership in 2021 to conserve a magnificent 7,500 acres on the flanks of Mt. Shasta. It demonstrates how conservation easements sustain natural forest management and restore habitats for multiple vulnerable species (including California Gray Wolf, Sierra Nevada Red Fox, and Northern Goshawk) at landscape scale, and even through significant fires (The Antelope Fire burned through portions of the property in 2021). This keystone property straddles the crest that divides the Sacramento and Klamath River basins and protects the source headwaters of these mighty rivers. The property encompasses the high ridges along the northeastern flank of Mount Shasta, and its meadows and springs feed clean, cold water into these essential watersheds.

The Mt. Shasta Timberlands project will maintain the property as a working forest and add to the network of over 40,000 acres which PFT has already conserved with willing private landowners in this Mt. Shasta Headwaters area. It also secures lasting connections with millions of acres of the adjacent Shasta and Klamath National Forests–a rare opportunity to create a vast, integrated, conserved expanse while actively managing for climate resiliency, critical wildlife habitats, increased carbon stores, reduced wildfire risk and water security for fish, farms, and people. Further, this project conserves these vital lands while supporting timber and mill jobs in an economically disadvantaged county.

Maintaining this spectacular property in private hands and on the tax rolls, this conservation easement will guide management to protect public trust resources at a fraction of the cost of public ownership. It also ensures continued private investment in the property’s long-term stewardship. The Mt. Shasta Timberlands project is an exemplary partnership that promises integrated solutions to environmental challenges at landscape scale. With our dedicated partner Campbell Global, Pacific Forest Trust hopes to bring this conservation easement acquisition over the finish line by early 2023.

Give with confidence. Charity Navigator awarded Pacific Forest Trust a perfect score in finance and accountability.