the_sacrament682:/business/story/2222060.html
By Jim Downing jdowning@sacbee.com q{
Published: Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009 - 12:00 am Page 8B Last Modified: Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009 - 8:08 am
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries on Wednesday evening announced the nation's largest forest carbon-offset project, meant to keep millions of tons of climate-warming gases out of the atmosphere over the next century.
Forestry and some conservation groups said the deal shows the state's new rules on forest offsets, adopted last week by the Air Resources Board, will be attractive to landowners.
But some environmental advocates said it's a sign that the timber industry is poised to capitalize on a provision that allows clear-cutting on land enrolled in carbon-offset programs.
"This is the thing we were worried about," said Michael Endicott, resource sustainability advocate at Sierra Club California.
The deal coincides with a high-profile international climate summit Schwarzenegger is hosting in Los Angeles this week.
On four plots totaling 60,000 acres in Tuolumne, Tehama, Shasta and Siskiyou counties, Sierra Pacific is committing to timber management strategies that should store more carbon compared with "business as usual."
"We can still manage our forests, but we have to meet or exceed the baseline conditions," said Mark Pawlicki, a spokesman for the company.
Over the next five years, Sierra Pacific expects the new management practices will keep 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide stored in the trees and soil that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere. That's equivalent to what's generated by burning 170 million gallons of gasoline.
Additional carbon would be stored in subsequent years, with the deal constraining what Sierra Pacific can do with the land for 100 years.
That stored carbon could likely be purchased as an "offset" by industrial polluters or electricity generators needing to reduce emissions under the state's "cap and trade" system. That program is slated to take effect in 2012, though details have yet to be finalized.
Clear-cutting, or removing all the trees in a plot, is allowed on sections of up to 40 acres on private land in California. The offset policy doesn't change that.
Land registered for a forest-offset program could be clear-cut if that represented an improvement over how the land would have been managed otherwise. For instance, a forest in an area that has been cleared every 40 years might instead be allowed to grow for 80 years before logging, a cycle that would likely store more carbon.
Groups like the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity oppose clear-cutting mainly because it can damage wildlife habitat, erode forest soils and pollute waterways. By making carbon-offset revenue available only for lands logged less invasively - by cutting some trees but leaving others, for instance - the state could have discouraged clear-cutting, they argue.
But other groups like the Nature Conservancy support the new rules and say they balance the need to have a program that is attractive to landowners while still maintaining environmental standards.
"There's a fine line with how far you should go with additional (environmental) requirements," said Michelle Passero, the group's senior climate policy adviser, who helped craft the rules approved last week.
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