Need to reduce your carbon? You can ‘buy’ these Pierce Co. trees without digging them up
A program that’s adding trees to Pierce County’s publicly owned wild spaces will help businesses offset their carbon footprints.
The Pierce Conservation District is the first in the nation to start such a program, said executive director Ryan Mello.
“This is not smoke and mirrors,” Mello said. “This is all well-thought out by really smart ecologists and economists.”
Carbon dioxide emissions are the result of fossil fuel processing and burning. They are the chief culprit in human-caused climate change. Regulations and public concern are putting pressure on companies to go green. But not all have the ability to quickly reduce their carbon emissions.
That’s where programs and organizations like the Conservation District can help. A business can get closer to being carbon neutral by purchasing carbon credits.
A coal-burning power company or an exhaust spewing airline can, for example, purchase carbon credits to offset their pollution.
That’s the thinking behind the more than 6,000 trees the Pierce Conservation District has planted this year at Clarks Creek in Puyallup and a larger site between South Prairie and Orting. Those trees and the carbon they’ll suck from the atmosphere over the next 25 years represent credits.
The Clarks Creek project should produce 829 carbon credits, Mello said. One credit equals one ton of sequestered carbon.
It’s not an arbitrary system, Mello said. The credits are certified by the City Forest Credits program, a Seattle-based nonprofit that verifies the credits but is not involved in any transactions. The organization gets its funding from local and national philanthropy and charges a small fee for certification, said director Liz Johnston.
“We started our work to address the need for additional revenue sources for urban forestry,” Johnston said. “Reforesting our cities and purchasing carbon offsets are just one of the actions that the private sector can take to mitigate climate change.”
“Their whole role in all of this is to ensure all of it is valid, has integrity, that people aren’t double counting credits,” Mello said.
City Forest Credits takes into account geographical location, soil types, weather patterns, topography and other influences on the trees that will affect how they grow.
“The climate zone and the type of trees that are planted are the main two factors,” Johnston said.
The organization monitors their certified projects for their duration, she said.
Planting party
On Nov. 7, volunteers and crews spent a Saturday planting about 1.5 acres along Clarks Creek with 665 western red cedar, douglas fir, big leaf maple, sitka spruce, alder and other species. The acreage is part of the Peck Riparian Planting Project.
While it might look simple at first glance, the project involves more than planting a tree and walking away.
First, the land was must be prepared. Often, that involves removing invasive species like reed canary grass, scotch broom and non-native blackberry. After the trees are planted, those invasive plants must be controlled, sometimes for years, until the trees are tall enough to rise above them. Some trees need tubular nets to protect them from deer browsing.
Clarks Creek is a tributary of the Puyallup River that supports chinook, coho, chum, steelhead and cutthroat trout.
The trees the Conservation District planted at Clarks Creek will shade the creek. That reduces water temperature and increases dissolved oxygen — things fish need to thrive. Shade also cuts down on aquatic plant life. Those plants can trap sediment and increase urban flooding danger.
The Conservation District bears all up front costs: seedling, labor, materials.
“Like we would on any other restoration project,” Mello said. “This is what the Conservation District does for a living every day.”
The Conservation District is working with a broker, Zurich-based South Pole, to sell the credits. The going rate, Mello said, is $15-25 per credit.
“Those dollars will be reinvested right back into our mission,” Mello said.
“There’s just never enough public dollars to plant trees, much less maintain them and care for them,” Johnston said.
This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 5:22 AM.
