As these dead trees decay, the carbon will be released. The majority of carbon collected when the tree was alive remains stored in the charred wood.

That project - like Green Diamond’s - is likely to be terminated.Ī charred tree on one of Green Diamond’s Klamath Basin properties, June 29, 2023. In Central Oregon, the Lionshead Fire torched most of the acreage of a carbon offset project developed by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. In Northeast Washington, wildfires have repeatedly buffeted a large carbon offset project on the lands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. They will eventually release this carbon as they topple to the ground and begin the decadeslong process of decay, or perhaps more quickly should another fire sweep through this land.įires also have caused big losses in two other Pacific Northwest forest tracts that had been used to offset fossil fuel pollution. The vast majority now resides in dead trees. That is equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced through the course of a year by more than 700,000 cars driving 11,500 miles.Ī small portion of Green Diamond’s lost carbon went directly into the atmosphere through combustion as the fire swept through the forest. Year after year, they would act like worker bees, collecting carbon dioxide and - with the aid of the sunlight and water - use photosynthesis to store more of it in their wood.ĭuring the fire, Green Diamond lost live trees that stored some 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. The 2021 Bootleg Fire burned through more than 100,000 acres of Green Diamond timber lands that were in a Southern Oregon carbon offset project. The Bootleg Fire’s toll on Green Diamond carbon offset projects In burning through nearly 20% of the company’s Klamath project lands, it also has helped to stoke a broader debate about the ability of multibillion-dollar forestry offset markets to deliver the carbon savings that are supposed to happen from these deals.Įarlier this year, Green Diamond filed documents with a California state regulatory board that calls for an offset project covering most of the company’s Southern Oregon acreage to be “terminated.” The Bootleg Fire upended the Green Diamond carbon storage plans in Southern Oregon. Yet, so far, almost all of that removal has come from forest or other land-based projects, according to a global assessment released earlier this year by scientists who concluded these efforts must greatly expand to keep global temperatures from rising more the 1.5 degrees Celsius - which is the increase nations agreed to try not to exceed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Some of that may be done by new technologies now under development that can take carbon dioxide out of the air and put it in long-term storage. In exchange, the company received millions of dollars in payments from Microsoft and other companies seeking to offset their carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels by paying to grow more wood on this land.Īs temperatures rise due to the buildup of greenhouse gas pollution, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has emerged as a key part of the broader battle to limit the effects of climate change by shifting away from fossil fuels. The company had committed to century-long plans to slow the pace of logging on some 570,000 acres. This was supposed to be a showcase for Seattle-based Green Diamond’s forestry strategy for a warming world. The massive Bootleg Fire destroyed trees in the Klamath Basin, including portions of two carbon offset projects covering 570,000 acres and operated by Green Diamond.

Today, June 29, 2023, only blackened trees remain.

Justin Kostick, forest manager for the Green Diamond timber company, shows a cellphone photo shot when this stretch of trees was burned during the Bootleg Fire in 2021. “As much as I’ve come up here in the last two years … it never feels good,” Kostick said. Since then, he has returned to the burn zone again and again to supervise the planting of some 4.2 million new seedlings. He spent days and nights on fire lines in a largely unsuccessful effort to slow Bootleg’s advance through the company’s Klamath Basin lands. They were killed by the fierce heat of the Bootleg Fire, which raged through here in July 2021, sending up huge pyrocumulus clouds of smoke and ash some 30,000 feet into the earth’s atmosphere - generating their own thunderstorms.įor Justin Kostick, forestry manager for the Green Diamond timber company, this bleak landscape has become a familiar, depressing sight. Most stand erect, a few so bowed that their tops curl down to touch the ground. Today, these trees are charred black snags that bake in the summer sun.

Large oregon fire map