Forest Investment Zones

“Forest Investment Zones” is an initiative to enhance forest ecosystems and thereby the viability of local forest-based economies and communities.  The Forest Investment Zones program is funded by the non-profit US Endowment for Forestry and Communities (http://www.usendowment.org), whose mission is to "work collaboratively with partners in the public and private sectors to advance systemic, transformative and sustainable change for the health and vitality of the nation’s working forests and forest-reliant communities".

One Forest Investment Zone - Sustainable Northwest, based in Portland, Oregon - is comprised of publicly-owned forests in northeastern Oregon and northern California including a portion of the North Coast region in Trinity County (http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org). Under the Endowment’s Forest Investment Zone initiative, Sustainable Northwest will be granted up to $2 million over five years to be leveraged with other funds to test and implement strategies that yield healthier working forests and local economic opportunities.

It is well-established that forest conservation and management of forests as carbon sinks and to prevent catastrophic wildfires can be a viable strategy to reduce GHGs and the impacts of future climate change (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration).  See “Carbon Sequestration.”