Over the past decade, roughly 40 million forest acres changed ownership: As paper companies and other large-scale timberland owners merge or move on, they sell this land in fragments to investor-owners who consider the landscape an asset to buy, hold and sell. Market analysts forecast increasing forest fragmentation over the next two decades. With as many as 20 million acres going up for sale, ever smaller parcels will be divided and sold for development. The result: our landscape—and the local economies and wildlife that depend on it—will shrink.

Our Efforts

For more than 20 years, our approach has focused on collaboration, rather than confrontation, to develop solutions to the nation’s most complex environmental challenges—including major changes that have enveloped the forest products industry. Even as our effort to protect forest land continues, we face an enormous challenge: More than half of America’s forestland is privately owned—and at growing risk of development or land conversion. That’s why we’ve launched creative new efforts to help save these treasured landscapes, including:

Sustainable Forest Management: North Coast Forests

The Fund has been at the forefront of forestland conservation through sustainable forestry. By taking this approach, we are demonstrating that sustainable forestry can be used as an effective tool to protect water, wildlife and jobs. On California’s North Coast, we’re pioneering new ways to protect and sustainably manage working forests. At our Garcia River, Big River and Salmon Creek forests, we’re restoring more than 40,000 acres of watersheds and forestland, directly benefiting the steelhead trout, coho salmon and other species that call this region home. We’re demonstrating a new way to sustainably manage these forests, as a nonprofit owner that uses both sound environmental strategy and sound economics—including a light-touch harvest regimen, sales of carbon offsets and a supply of local jobs. This emerging model of forest conservation can benefit our wildlife, climate and communities.

The Partnership for Southern Forestland Conservation

The Partnership for Southern Forestland Conservation (PFSFC) was created in 2008 after several forest conservation and management organizations met to discuss growing concerns about the future sustainability of large tracts of forestland in the South. Studies by the U.S. Forest Service suggest that as many as 44 million forested acres will be converted to non-forest use by 2030 with the lion’s share in the South. The goal of the partnership, a loose coalition rather than a formal organization, is to protect 20 million acres of actively managed forestland in the South by 2020. The partnership will serve in a catalytic role to develop and implement strategies to address the conservation of forest lands on a large scale.

National Community Forestry Service Center

The National Community Forestry Service Center, a new program within The Conservation Fund, coordinates the broad range of sophisticated intermediary services available through our organization to assist communities in identifying, acquiring, conserving, owning, and building capacity to manage working forest lands for the long term. We are focusing initial efforts on places of high rural poverty, especially in the Southern Black Belt, Appalachia, Upper Midwest, and West Coast. The National Community Forestry Service Center will provide direct services to assist communities in owning and managing working forests, while also creating a framework to advance community forestry as a “place-based economic development” strategy.

Natural Capital Investment Fund

The Natural Capital Investment Fund uses “patient capital” and targeted technical assistance to support natural resource-based businesses in startup, expansion and building capacity to create “triple bottom line” jobs for the long term. Established in 2001, NCIF is a certified community development financial institution that provides specialized debt and equity financing to a broad range of natural resource-based businesses including value-added forest products, value-added and specialty foods, ecotourism businesses and more. NCIF has invested more than $3.5 million in natural resource-based businesses in West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina and is exploring expansion to other states.

East Texas Timberland Investment and Conservation Opportunities

The Fund has preserved more than 75,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest in east Texas. Our work includes initiatives in Big Thicket—often referred to as the "biological crossroads of North America" and one of the nation's most endangered parks. We're involved in the innovative Houston Wilderness Program and established the Texas Pineywoods Experience, a large-scale initiative that aims to revitalize and protect the economy and environment of the Pineywoods region of east Texas. We also are working with partners to establish the Neches River National Refuge.

Other Forestry Work

New Forest Fund

In 2009, we launched the New Forest Fund, a dedicated source of conservation capital that will allow us to acquire and sustainably manage working forests with high conservation value, saving them from inappropriate development. Growth of the New Forest Fund, with backing from foundations, private investments in the fund or donations of forestland, will be vital to our efforts to protect America’s forest landscape. "The New Forest Fund represents the heart of our mission—to build conservation strategies that achieve both economic and environmental goals," said Evan Smith, vice president of forestland acquisition and finance.

Click here to read more about the inaugural gift from the Richard King Mellon Foundation >>

Read more about our work in these regions/states:

Southeast: Mapping the Longleaf Pine

Minnesota: Upper Mississippi Forest Project

Wyoming: Wyoming Forest Legacy Program (completed 2007)

Delaware: Glatfelter Forest (completed 2007)

South Carolina: Woodbury Hamilton Ridge Forestlands (completed 2006)

Maine: Downeast Lakes property (completed 2005)

West Virginia: West Virginia Forest Legacy Program (Assessment of Need)(completed 2003)