So far, small forests have also not generated piles of money for the small forest landowners. It’s not a big deal for the Christensen’s who don’t rely on timber revenue for income, but for small forest owners who do, carbon companies have to make the case that the sale of credits could one day counterbalance some of the lost revenue from reducing or ending logging. Until carbon credits are worth significantly more than the $6.50 that each one fetches on the voluntary market today, or the $30 to $40 the regulatory markets command, the companies have to make an appeal to landowner values.
“We basically don’t make any money from this. This is out of love,” said Julie Christensen walking with John through the forest on a rare, cool July afternoon. The couple gets less than $2,000 per year on their forest project, and said they invest most of that in planting new trees. Meanwhile, they get regular notes in the mail from timber harvesters and companies offering to buy the property or to help log it for shared profit.
David Bugni, another small forest owner near Estacada with 100 acres in the carbon market, is collecting similar returns as the Christensens on his credits. Bugni, a 2022 Oregon Department of Forestry Forester of the Year, has been doing restoration work on the forest since the 1990s, and has probably spent more money on it than he’s bound to ever receive from the sale of his carbon credits, unless the value per ton of carbon rises significantly. He’s been able to leverage his forest restoration work over the years to bring in more than $1 million in state and federal grants to build fish passages and native plant habitat in his forest, but he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money either matching grant investments in projects or paying for them outright.
Choosing a legacy
Both the Christensens and Bugni entered the carbon market to protect their legacy. They did it as an alternative to an old-fashioned conservation easement, which is a legally binding agreement between landowners and a government agency or conservation organization, ensuring little to no development on a swath of land in perpetuity to protect it. In exchange for agreeing not to develop the land, landowners can get tax incentives and, in some cases, a payment from an agency or a land trust.
