NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wildfi re
Continued from Page A1
Scientists worried
Some scientists have
expressed concern that the
buff er pool is not suffi ciently
protected against fi re risks
over the 100-year period, and
hold up Warm Springs as an
example.
“The fact that the Warm
Springs project has burned
twice in a decade is a perfect
example of the problem,” said
Danny Cullenward, lecturer at
Stanford Law School and pol-
icy director of CarbonPlan, a
nonprofi t that independently
analyzes carbon removal
opportunities based on science
and data. “There is no way the
protocol’s buff er pool holds
up if that pattern is common in
the program.”
The wildfi re in 2020 wasn’t
the fi rst time the project area
burned. When the project was
in the setup stage, a wildfi re
burned around 2,000 acres
of forest within the project
boundaries, said Don Samp-
son, who helped arrange the
agreement when he was chief
executive of Warm Springs
Ventures, the tribe’s economic
arm. Sampson worked for
ventures from 2013 to 2016.
When the project was in its
early stages, said Sampson, a
series of independent anal-
yses took place to verify the
amount and value of carbon
that could be sequestered and
off set. The entire process took
3½ years to complete, longer
than fi rst anticipated due to
some setbacks, including the
wildfi re that burned around
2,000 acres of the forest.
“They had to reassess
the burned areas and how
they would regenerate,” said
Sampson.
Carbon credits
When the preparation
work was complete, the Cal-
ifornia Air Resources Board
issued Warm Springs 2.15
million carbon off set credits.
The off sets represented 2.15
million metric tons of veri-
fi ed greenhouse gas emission
reductions.
Annual growth within the
project boundary can be con-
verted to additional carbon
off sets that the tribes can sell.
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
“THE FACT THAT THE WARM SPRINGS PROJECT HAS BURNED TWICE IN A DECADE IS A
PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE PROBLEM. THERE IS NO WAY THE PROTOCOL’S BUFFER POOL
HOLDS UP IF THAT PATTERN IS COMMON IN THE PROGRAM.”
Danny Cullenward, lecturer at Stanford Law School and policy director of CarbonPlan,
Contributed photo/Oregon Department of Forestry
The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs are evaluating a carbon sequester project after much of the project area burned last year.
To date, more than 2.6 mil-
lion Air Resources Board car-
bon off set credits have been
issued to Warm Springs.
“There are about 20 proj-
ects in the range of 1 mil-
lion to 5 million off set cred-
its upfront, and a handful that
get as big as almost 15 mil-
lion,” said Cullenward. “I
would say Warm Springs is
one of the large projects but
not atypically large nor on
the extreme end of the size
distribution.”
How are the off set cred-
its used? In 2018, the tribes
announced they had con-
tracted with a third party to
sell the credits over several
years and that those credits
would “provide revenue in
the tens of millions of dol-
lars for tribal operations,
improved forest management
and economic development
initiatives.”
The tribes declined to
confi rm the specifi c amount
received from the agreement.
‘Much-needed revenue’
Sampson said the tribes
set aside some of the funds
for forest thinning and for-
est health projects, to pre-
vent wildfi re and tree
disease.
“Overall
it
brought
it
much-needed
reve-
nue,” he said. “That was
the biggest revenue source
they had for quite a few
years.”
Funds were also set aside
for a cannabis project, said
Sampson. That project stalled
during his tenure at Warm
Springs but was later revived
into a hemp project, which
received federal approval
last year.
The decision to enter the
program was timely, as it
coincided with the winding
down of the local sawmill,
Warm Springs Forest Prod-
ucts Industries, which was
struggling to turn a profi t due
to a lack of large logs. The
program was also consis-
tent with the tribe’s policy on
generating revenue through
environmentally conscious
ventures.
“Rather than take an
extractive approach and cut-
ting timber and selling logs
off the reservation, (Tribal
Council) wanted to transition
to one that was more conser-
vation-based and still make
revenue for the tribe,” said
Sampson. “So from that point
of view, it was a successful
project.”
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