‘Climate is a forest product’

[New Hampshire] Maintaining and improving the world’s working forests is key to slowing global warming, but climate change will accelerate if the current rate of forest loss continues, according to scientists and policy experts who will speak at a conference in Concord this week. ”Development is really outpacing forestry as the highest and best use of forest lands, and finding ways to deal with that will have significant climate benefits,” The keys are preserving existing forests through conservation easements; storing more carbon by increasing the average age of the trees and selecting for more hardwoods than softwoods _ which also increases the wood’s market value; and making sure such measures produce an economic return for landowners. ”Climate is a forest product,” she said. ”We can leverage that to increase the net stocks of carbon that these forests are taking up and holding … in a way that puts a higher-value forest industry back on the landscape.”

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org