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What is Conservation Finance?
Conservation Finance is the practice of raising and managing, and deploying capital to support land, water, and resource conservation.
In the case of the Forest Service, it is the practice of developing innovative financing models that leverage Forest Service-appropriated funding by engaging private capital to increase the pace and scale of restoration. Through these models, the Forest Service is able to focus on a return-driven investment approach that aligns with overlapping environmental, social, and financial outcomes.
News
The 3rd round of the Innovative Finance for National Forests (IFNF) grant program awarded Region 5 with 4 of 11 IFNF awards totaling $775K out of approximately $2.2M in available funds. These grants will support development of finance models that leverage private sector capital to support resilience of the National Forest System and surrounding lands. The selected projects will assess the feasibility of ideas, and pilot efforts that bring external resources in the form of financing and funding to bear on wildfire risk, watershed health, and recreation infrastructure. The IFNF website has more detailed descriptions of the IFNF program and awarded projects.
Map of Projects
Background
In 2018, the Forest Service signed an agreement with Blue Forest Conservation documenting their shared commitment to landscape-scale restoration and launched the Yuba I Project in partnership with the Tahoe National Forest. This was the first time a Conservation Finance tool, the Forest Resilience Bond (FRB), was used within the Forest Service. It provided $4 million in private capital from four investors to finance ecological restoration treatments across 15,000 acres of national forest.
Collaboration on the Yuba I FRB catalyzed the formation of the North Yuba Forest Partnership (NYFP), a group of nine stakeholders committed to protecting the 275,000 acres of forested land in the North Yuba Watershed. In 2020 the 2nd FRB was launched as Yuba II, at $12.5M, to leverage ultimately $25M of service work to include thinning and prescribed burns on roughly 48,000 acres. This time the FRB was scaled to more than 2X the previous amount and included anchor beneficiary, Yuba Water Agency, providing more than 4X its previous contribution to Yuba I. Yuba II also included, for the first time, corporate partners as new beneficiaries to an FRB. Implementation began summer 2021, with the goal for implementation concluding in 3 years.
Region 5 now has upwards of 17 CF projects at various stages of development integrating these innovative financing models in 15 of their 18 national forests.
We are working with several Conservation Finance Partners:
Blue Forest Conservation (BFC)
Blue Forest is a non-profit organization creating sustainable financial solutions to meet pressing environmental challenges. Its flagship financial product, the Forest Resilience Bond (FRB), deploys private capital to finance forest restoration projects on private and public lands to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, avoid carbon emissions, and protect communities, water resources, and ecosystems. Blue Forest is now involved in the scoping and implementation of more than 10 projects in R5 and has grown to over 20 personnel, bolstering the incredible support they have and continue to provide to our National Forests. While Blue Forest supports all varieties of restoration projects, they specialize in forest restoration and watershed health.
- The FRB Impact Report 2021 tracks the environmental, economic, and social impacts to the local ecosystems and communities where our first Forest Resilience Bond (FRB) project was implemented during this reporting year.
- Video on the Forest Resilience Bond in partnership with the US Forest Service and World Resources Institute.
- Check out the Yuba Project Story Map to learn more about the project, treatments, and impacts of the great work done on the Tahoe NF.
- Check out the Yuba II Story Map to learn about the North Yuba Forest Partnership and continuing work on the Tahoe NF.
- TEDx Fighting Fire with Finance Video
Quantified Ventures
Quantified Ventures is a certified B-Corp that designs, capitalizes, and scales investible solutions to address pressing challenges facing communities to produce positive environmental and social outcomes. While QV supports a wide variety of conservation projects, they specialize in sustainable recreation.
- Quantified Ventures video: Scaling Environmental Impact Bonds
- QV received a second round of IFNF funding to collaborate with Mammoth Lake Trails and Public Access to support campground improvements on the Inyo National Forest. View this project summary to learn more!
- To learn more about QV’s work, visit their forestry and land use webpage.
Conservation Investment Management
Conservation Investment Management – Conservation Investment Management brings a new approach to nature conservation based on innovation, entrepreneurship, and science, funded by private capital. We partner with public agencies, non-profits, communities, and landowners to develop conservation finance projects that conserve nature, are financially sustainable, and create local economic development. Examples of our work include:
- A supply chain and workforce development project combined with a wood product incubator taking place in Humboldt County, CA. This project focuses on the use of biomass from fuel reduction activities.
- Engaging in the development of a watershed funding mechanism to support forest conservation in Southern Forests.
- CIM is also developing compensatory mitigation projects on public lands through a partnership with land management agencies
Contacts
- R5 RO Conservation Finance Lead & Coordinator: Sherry Reckler & Madison Kirshner
- R5 CF Cadre: Sherry Reckler (R5 RO Conservation Finance & Corporate Social Responsibility Lead), Madison Kirshner (R5 RO Conservation Finance Coordinator), Jerry Brian (SoCal Zone), Lara Buluc (RO SPF), Jason Collier (SoCal Zone) , Lejon Hamann (North Zone), Jeff Heys (SoCal Zone), Jim Junette (So Sierra Zone), Alizabeth O’Neil (Central Sierra Zone), Kat Powelson (Central Sierra Zone) Judi Tapia (So Sierra Zone), Tanya Torst (North Zone)
- R5 CF Cadre meets once monthly to information share and plan educational opportunities to enhance greater region-wide understanding and use of conservation finance tools.
Quick Links
- Intro to Conservation Finance at the Forest Service
- Conservation Finance Readiness Checklist
- Forest Service National Conservation Finance Program Webpage
- 2022 Conservation Finance Training Toolkit
- About Compensatory Mitigation
Related Information
- USDA blog: Innovative Finance Model Accelerates Forest Restoration
- WRI Press Release: Forest Resilience Bond to Help Fund $4.6 Million Restoration Project to Mitigate Wildfire Risk in Tahoe National Forest
