Remembering 'A Quiet Hero': Conservationist Edgar Wayburn, 1906-2010

The conservation community is remembering and celebrating one of its greatest advocates this week, following the death of Dr. Edgar Wayburn at the age of 103.

Wayburn, a physician and five-term Sierra Club president, was well-known to his fellow Pacific Forest Trust supporters as one of our advisory board members, our 2004 Outside-the-Box award winner, and the father of our president and co-CEO, Laurie Wayburn.

In broader conservation circles throughout the country he was known as “the 20th century John Muir,” a quietly effective and determined advocate for safeguarding our beautiful open landscapes. "He has saved more of our wilderness than any other person alive," President Bill Clinton said in 1999 when he awarded Dr. Wayburn the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Dr. Wayburn had central roles in protecting 104 million acres of Alaskan wilderness; establishing and enlarging Redwood National Park and Point Reyes National Seashore in California; and starting the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in and around San Francisco, wrote the The New York Times in its tribute.

His methods were the old-fashioned ones of writing letters, raising money, commenting on environmental studies and attending public hearings. He was widely respected for the authority and persistence he brought to lobbying public officials, always softly, with a courtly Georgia accent.

Dr. Wayburn helped transform the Sierra Club from the 3,000-member outing and skiing club he joined in 1939 into a powerful force in environmentalism today with 730,000 members. He served five one-year terms as president of the club in the 1960s and for many years was honorary president.

“Legislators know that if Dr. Wayburn comes into your office, what might have been inconceivable at the beginning of the conversation is inevitable by the end of it,” Representative Nancy Pelosi, now the speaker of the House, told Sierra magazine in 1999. -- The New York Times

With the help of the Sierra Club, local conservationists, and his own tireless lobbying of state legislators, [Wayburn] won approval of acquisitions that gradually but substantially expanded Mount Tamalpais State Park, from 870 acres in 1948 to 6,300 acres by 1972, wrote the San Francisco Chronicle in its front page story on Dr. Wayburn’s passing.

Other achievements included the Point Reyes National Seashore, the nation's first major metropolitan-area national park, and the Bay Area's environmental crown jewel, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which encompasses 200,000 acres and nearly 60 miles of shoreline from Point Reyes to the Peninsula….

"He didn't raise his voice, but he was extremely persuasive, and he didn't back down," said the Sierra Club's deputy executive director, Bruce Hamilton. - The San Francisco Chronicle

A host of major news outlets have written very moving tributes to Dr. Wayburn’s life and work. You can read more below.


Edgar Wayburn, a Leader in Saving the Wilderness, Dies at 103
The New York Times, March 9, 2010

Edgar Wayburn, 103, dies; No. 1 protector of U.S. wilderness
The Washington Post, March 9, 2010

Conservationist, Sierra Club leader Edgar Wayburn dies at 103
San Jose Mercury News, March 8, 2010

Conservationist Edgar Wayburn dies at 103
Associated Press, March 8, 2010

Edgar Wayburn dies at 103; longtime Sierra Club president helped double U.S. parkland
The Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2010

Five-term Sierra Club chief, Edgar Wayburn, dies
San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 2010

Sierra Club's Edgar Wayburn was a quiet hero
SF Chronicle Editorial, March 9, 2010

Persuasive Voice for Parkland
The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2010

Conservationist Edgar Wayburn, 103, Dies
Democracy Now! March 9, 2010

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Charting A Path to Biomass Sustainability

Swelling fuel costs and increasing concerns over energy security are prompting policy makers to search for new sources of inexpensive domestic energy to displace reliance on fossil fuel imports.

While this quest has proven no small order, it has caught the attention of forest and mill owners, who for years have recognized the value of using wood waste -- sometimes called "woody biomass" to co-generate heat or electricity at lumber mills. Timber harvest waste, mill residues, and small trees removed for forest management are all sources of biomass that potentially can be combusted for energy generation.

Last week, the Pacific Forest Trust participated in the last of a series of regional workshops held to explore the possibilities for expanding this supply of biomass energy from forests.

The Pacific Coast Bioenergy Policy Forum, organized by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and The Heinz Center, sought to provide a forum for stakeholders to discuss the issues specifically pertaining to biomass development in the West.

Conference attendees included a broad cross-section of 70 stakeholders from the forest and energy industries, environmental groups, academia, and local, state and federal government.

Presentations were given on a variety of topics, including biomass availability, sustainability considerations, examples of actual biomass projects, and policies relating to biomass. Jay Jensen, Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, was also in attendance, and delivered a keynote on the Obama administration’s approach to federal biomass policy.

Over the course of two days, areas of both consensus and contention emerged from the diverse stakeholder group. Attendees were optimistic about the possibilities biomass utilization presented in addressing a suite of problems, from decreasing reliance on foreign oil, to reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire, to strengthening rural economies through the creation of jobs. Participants agreed on the importance of “sustainability,” but acknowledged the challenges inherent to defining this subjective concept.

While there was great agreement on many fronts, the two days were not without their share of debate. A central point of contention arose around the role of biomass taken from federal lands. Currently, biomass from federal lands is not eligible for renewable energy tax incentives under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). Proponents cited the heightened fire risk on many federal lands, and the considerable need for fuels reduction treatments on these lands.

The inclusion of federal lands in tax incentive programs was seen as a way to defray the treatment costs facing federal managers. It was also argued that extending eligibility to biomass from federal lands would create a greater certainty in biomass supply, which would lead to increased investment in infrastructure, such as generation facilities. This greater infrastructure investment would also benefit private forest landowners, reducing removal and transport costs and making biomass treatments more economically viable on private lands.

Representatives from the U.S. Forest Service echoed many of these sentiments, but acknowledged that building community trust was still a major hurdle that had to be overcome. Despite the great potential of utilizing biomass on federal lands, substantial concerns remained that biomass projects on these lands would open the door to excessive timber harvest under the guise of ecological restoration.

Although no easy answers presented themselves, the conference underscored the central role decisions over federal lands would play in regional biomass development—and their implications for both public and private lands alike.

The economic viability of biomass projects on private lands will depend on the stimulation of infrastructure investment, which will in turn depend on the supply certainty that federal lands can offer. As a result, the fate of biomass production on both public and private lands largely will be intertwined.

Going forward, policies must remain cognizant of this interrelatedness, and find ways to create certain, sustainable biomass supplies while building trust and guaranteeing the ecological integrity of restoration efforts. While also no small order, the opportunities for energy security, strengthened rural economies, and ecological restoration make it a challenge well worth undertaking.







Anton Chiono
Policy Associate

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New Report: Pacific Northwest Forests Are Top Carbon Storage 'Powerhouses'

The vast, dense forests of the Pacific Northwest are "the carbon storage powerhouses of the U.S." and in some cases store more CO2 than tropical forests, according to a new report by The Wilderness Society.

“The mature and old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska are among the Earth’s greatest carbon-storing ecosystems,” Jerry Franklin, professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources, told The Olympian.

The report indicates forests from southern Alaska to Oregon store more than 1-1/2 times as much carbon as the entire amount of carbon dioxide burned in fossil fuels throughout the country each year. Using data compiled by the U.S. Forest Service, TWS analysts identified 10 national forests that store about 9.8 billion metric tons of carbon on a total of 19 million acres.

"The federal Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 11% of greenhouse emissions are offset each year in forests, urban trees and agricultural soils. States such as California increasingly are looking to preserve and expand their forests to counteract the effects of greenhouse gas emissions."
- Los Angeles Times

While most of the forests named in the study were on federal land, the report noted 1 million of the 19 million acres named as top carbon storage banks have no formal protections in place against development or unsustainable logging that would release stored carbon back into the atmosphere.

Study co-author Mike Anderson of TWS told The Olympian the ability of the national forests to store so much carbon is another important reason to protect them from forest loss and unsustainable logging. Some 60 percent of the carbon stored in a tree leaks out when it is harvested, and globally, about 20 percent of all recent, human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions can be traced to deforestation.

To read the original report, visit TWS' website.

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A New Vision for the Klamath-Cascade

PFT Staff Traveling through Vital 'Wood Basket' Region to Build Local Stakeholder Advisory Council

This week the Pacific Forest Trust is launching a new chapter in our initiative to protect one of America’s great treasures, the Klamath-Cascade Region.

The Klamath-Cascade spans 9.8 million acres in an arc that sweeps from Mt. Lassen and the headwaters of the Feather River across the slopes of majestic Mt. Shasta and up into the Klamath River basin in Oregon.

The Region contains some of the most diverse and productive coniferous forests in the world. It is home to more than 100 imperiled species of plants and animals as well as the source of drinking water for more than 22 million Californians. Its forestland base is a checkerboard of publicly protected lands and unprotected private lands that form the state’s prime “wood basket” and center of the forest products industry. It produces nearly half the total timber volume harvested in California each year.

Conservation of the region’s private forests is critically important for a host of reasons including protection of habitats and watersheds across ownerships, species diversity, water quality, aesthetics, timber production and forest carbon storage.

Today, the region’s forests are relatively intact – but the private forests of the Klamath-Cascade Region are threatened by an array of forces, including the economic crisis, globalization and its impacts on the forest products industry, climate change, shifting demographics, unsustainable land management and the increasing conversion of forests to other uses.

Recognizing these threats, the Pacific Forest Trust has been at work on a Klamath-Cascade Greenprint for the Future. Based on years of research and conversations with landowners, community leaders, land use experts and others, the report is intended to raise awareness of this remarkable landscape and create a road map that will guide efforts to preserve a sustainable, forest resource-based future for the region.

To complete the Greenprint and take its findings and recommendations to the next stage of dialogue and action in the community, we are in the process of forming an advisory council of local stakeholders.

Meeting with the region’s many stakeholders means covering a lot of ground.

Which is why our conservation staff might be feeling like road warriors this week, as they travel through Sacramento, Susanville, Alturas, Yreka, McCloud and Redding to meet with local landowners, state and federal agency staff, conservationists, biologists, foresters and others to discuss the future of Klamath-Cascade lands and livelihoods.

A familiar face is leading our efforts in the region. Megan Wargo, who worked on our conservation team from 2005 to 2008, has returned to PFT as our Klamath-Cascade Program Director. Wargo most recently worked as a project manager for the Trust for Public Land’s Sierra Nevada/Northern California team. She has also served as a land protection specialist for the Piedmont Land Conservancy in Greensboro, N.C., and a stewardship associate at the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust in Homer, Ark.

“The Klamath-Cascade is an amazing area with great resources and a lot of opportunity for good conservation work now,” Wargo said upon her return. “It’s truly exciting to be working in this region. It’s an iconic landscape and so important to the state from both an ecological and economic standpoint.

“It’s one of the areas in California where the opportunity still exists to conserve forestland in a way that has a positive impact across the entire region, at the broader landscape level,” she added.

To learn more about the Klamath-Cascade Advisory Council, read their charter. We hope to launch their first meeting in late Spring 2010, when members will review the KC Greenprint and lay the groundwork for their collaboration going forward.

For more information about the Klamath-Cascade Initiative or its Advisory Council, contact Megan Wargo at 415-561-9559 ext. 18 or email mwargo [at] pacificforest.org.

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State Air Resources Board Sends Positive Signal on ‘Early Action’ under CAR Protocols

The California Air Resources Board’s meeting last week yielded good news for “early action” CO2 emissions reduction projects registered under the Climate Action Reserve’s (CAR) Forest Protocols.

‘Early action’ describes emissions reduction projects launched as voluntary efforts to help the state fight climate change before regulations are in place that require companies to meet its first-in-the nation goals to broadly reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that traps heat in the atmosphere.

Air Board chairwoman Mary Nichols made a number of very clear statements that she has every intention of ensuring that early action CAR (formerly known the California Climate Action Registry) projects are recognized in the state’s regulatory system.

One of the agenda items of last Thursday’s meeting included withdrawing the board’s adoption of a newer version of the voluntary Protocols. The procedural action was taken to free up ARB staff to work on preparing a compliance version of forest and other emissions reduction project protocols that will be used for regulatory purposes under AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Action of 2006.

The state’s landmark climate legislation calls for a cap and trade system to be in place by 2012, and ARB intends to develop compliance-grade protocols by year’s end in order to generate offsets for use in the system.

“Today’s [withdrawal] action does not in any way change ARB support for early actions" Nichols said, noting that there was no deviation from AB 32's commitment to recognize emissions reductions from projects registered under the California Climate Action Registry’s protocols.

Nichols also made a number of comments about how CCAR/CAR offsets are of the highest quality, noted that she was the first chair of the California Climate Action Registry, and said she was "proud of the work done by CAR."

ARB board member Barbara Riordan concurred with Nichols, noting that she also had served on the CCAR board and was committed to ensuring that early adopters, who stepped out and took a risk, were recognized in the state’s cap and trade program.

To read the comments we submitted regarding the incorporation of early action projects, click here [PDF].

We will be providing feedback to the ARB and Climate Action Registry as they work to modify the voluntary Forest Project Protocol for use in a regulatory system. The CAR standards continue to be the strongest accounting measures for ensuring that forest emissions reduction projects provide credible, verifiable and additional carbon offsets.

“The high quality of CAR emissions reductions continues to be validated by the market,” said PFT co-CEO Connie Best. “We’re seeing prices remain relatively strong for CAR emissions reductions in this extremely volatile period – something that can’t be said across the board for other credits. And we’re getting calls from landowners around the country who are looking for help with developing projects that meet the CAR standards. Their interest is a good indicator of confidence in the Forest Protocols.”

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PFT President Writes about Genesis of CA Forest Carbon Market in New Publication

Pacific Forest Trust President and co-CEO Laurie Wayburn explains how PFT has joined conservation and market forces to sustain forests in a new publication: “Conservation Capital in the Americas: Exemplary Conservation Finance Initiatives” (2010/256 pages/$30.00).

The collection of case studies is based on a conference of the same name held in January 2009 in Valdivia, Chile. Wayburn was a presenter at the conference, which was attended by more than 100 international conservation leaders and policy makers. They gathered to consider methods to find financial capital—as well as human, social, and natural capital—to steward the earth’s resources for future generations.

The book was edited by James N. Levitt, director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest.

“This is the story of how three aspects of California – history making politicians, legendary redwoods and powerful policies addressing climate change – joined to make history and form a new financial market for conservation,” Wayburn writes in her chapter, titled Carbon Markets and the New Economic Paradigm for Forest Sustainability.

In her case study, Wayburn tells the story of our Van Eck Forest Project, California’s first registered emissions reduction project. In the process, she gives an overview of deforestation and its global climate impacts, providing context from California’s “Redwood Summer” and subsequent periods in the state’s environmental policy history leading up to its landmark climate legislation, The Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), and its pioneering provisions for forests.

"The contributors to Conservation Capital in the Americas include some of the leading thinkers on conservation finance in the world, who asked: Where do we find the money, the talent, and the political will to do the jobs necessary to address complex threats to ecosystems that provide a spectrum of essential services that sustain life?"
- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

The answers were neither simple nor uniform. “Carefully crafted solutions will need to fit a dizzying array of local land ownership patterns, political contexts, and economic conditions,” Levitt says.

The book was published last month by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, in collaboration with Island Press, the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and the David Rockefeller Institute for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

The first chapter and full abstract for book can be found here along with purchase information.

Read more about the original Conservation Capital conference here.

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CA Air Resources Board Preparing for 'Compliance Use' Forest Protocols

The Climate Action Reserve’s Forest Project Protocols are on the agenda of the California Air Resources Board’s Thursday meeting, when state officials will move closer to implementing the country’s first government-backed cap and trade system.

Part of the meeting’s focus will be laying out a procedural road map for how carbon offsets will be used in California’s cap and trade system. Staff is expected to make a presentation outlining a process and time line for updating the voluntary protocols managed by the Climate Action Reserve with a regulatory version specifically designed for use in the cap and trade system.

As part of the process for developing new protocol regulations, the Board is expected to withdraw their endorsement of several protocols that have been used for “early action” emissions reduction initiatives – including forest projects – to focus staff resources on developing protocols for “compliance use.”

ARB spokesman Stanley Young told Point Carbon News the action will allow ARB to focus environmental review efforts on the standards that will ultimately be used to ensure compliance with cap and trade regulations created by the state’s landmark greenhouse gas reduction legislation, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32).

“Since we always intended to do an environmental analysis of the protocols as part of the cap-and-trade analysis, and ARB will no longer be adopting voluntary protocols in the future, we think the most direct approach was to withdraw ARB’s approval of all voluntary protocols and reconsider each of the protocols as part of the cap-and-trade program,” said Stanley Young, a spokesman for CARB.

The Air Board intends to adopt the regulations governing AB 32’s cap and trade program this fall, and state officials have expressed their intent to produce compliance-ready standards similar to the CAR Forest Project Protocol on a similar timetable.

Withdrawal of the protocols as qualifiers for “early action” credit under AB 32 has created some confusion over whether or not credits sold under earlier versions of the Protocols will automatically be allowed in California’s emissions trading program.

Traders and brokers have placed a high premium on forest carbon offsets issued by CAR, known as CRTs, because their rigorous requirements are considered to produce emissions reductions most likely to be accepted under AB 32 and in a national cap and trade system.

California EPA secretary Linda Adams – who also serves as chair of CAR’s board ¬– told Point Carbon she is “very confident” that the standard-making body’s voluntary offset protocols will be approved for compliance under AB 32.

“We feel very confident that since we’ve adopted the most stringent standards in the world, it’s highly likely that these projects will be given credit for early action,” she told Point Carbon News last week.

The Pacific Forest Trust has been assured that ARB does not intend to reject the current CAR Forest Protocol, but they do need to focus their energies on developing the compliance regulations, rather than investing further time and energy in the voluntary protocols.

“This is a positive step forward,” said Connie Best. “The sooner compliance-grade protocols are adopted by ARB, the sooner we will have certainty about standards and expectations.”

“The ARB action does not pertain to the Climate Action Reserve itself,” Best noted. “CAR continues to utilize the Forest Project Protocol and other protocols in its well-regarded program for registering rigorously quantified and independently verified voluntary emissions reductions from the various sectors.”

The ARB action may create some uncertainty on the part of companies with compliance obligations in California under AB32, and could lead them to defer investments in CAR projects, she added. But Best doesn’t see this action affecting the broader voluntary market, nor the appeal of CAR verified Carbon Reduction Tons as the highest available standard for projects and buyers outside the state.

Read the full Point Carbon story here.

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