Summer 2018 ForestLife

President’s Letter

Summer 2018 is setting heat records throughout the northern hemisphere; California is officially in drought; fires are blazing across western states.  Again.  This time, scientists are clearly saying this weather behavior is being driven by elevated CO₂ levels. Welcome to climate change, from the heat here to the floods in Japan to the fires in Scandinavia.  Each year the records keep getting set; predictions of 100 year events become 10 year events; the costs of dealing with these disasters, from loss of lives to property, rise.

It can seem abstract, far away, happening to someone else, until it hits home.  For those of us on the West Coast, it has been hitting home a lot. This year’s Ferguson Fire burned through PFT’s properties near Yosemite National Park.  CAL FIRE, USFS, NPS and local firefighters have done everything possible (as pictured on the cover), setting a fuel break along Henness Ridge, hoping to hold the fire there.  They back-burned across our lands, reducing fuels if the fire were to cross over.  It did, and has burned now across Highway 40 into the Park.  As of press time, they have succeeded in saving the homes at Yosemite West.  But the cost is intensely personal. The firefighters have lived for weeks in smoke so thick there is no visibility, in intense heat, with little sleep.  And two firefighters, Brian Hughes and Braden Varney, lost their lives fighting this fire.

Many of our forests were already stressed: overly dense, young, homogenous, and prone to insect and disease infestations. Climate change is a major intensifier of these stressors, adding drought and fire, further reducing forest resilience.  California’s Governor Jerry Brown and the legislature have invested record amounts of funding to restore and maintain forest health and resilience. These investments are something we need to continue and indeed increase because our forests, with their capacity to sequester vast amounts of carbon when properly managed, are also, as the eminent climate scientist Dr. James Hansen notes, key to avoiding unmitigated climate disaster.

Even as our national Administration denies climate change and seeks to reverse every policy aimed at mitigating and adapting to it, states are increasingly stepping up to the challenge. This September, California is hosting the Global Climate Action Summit.  Leaders from nations and states around the world are coming together to show their commitments to addressing climate change. A major focus will be on land-based sequestration. Natural lands, especially forests, as the largest, most expandable, and safest carbon sinks on Earth, will have center stage on Land Day.  PFT is hosting a side event with leaders from Washington, Oregon, and California discussing ways to manage and conserve temperate forests to best mitigate and adapt to climate change.  If we heal these forests, they have the power to heal the climate.  As a society, we have a choice.  We can fight climate change at its root by reducing CO2 emissions now, or we can face its inevitable effect: an ever-growing onslaught of more fires, floods, and human lives lost.

More in this Issue of ForestLife

• Restoring carbon rich, climate resilient forests across the west coast
• A first for Oregon: Mountcrest Forest conserved
• What price a watershed?
• Pioneering progress on forest and climate policy
• Donor Profile: Andrea Tuttle, PhD
• Saving beavers, headwaters, and tall timbers at McCloud Soda Springs
• Forestry at Soda Springs: Back to the future
• A fabulous Forest Fete!