This barrier-breaking initiative was initially conceived by NEWT as a market-based tool to support land trusts committed to protecting important forest blocks for climate resilience and wildlife connectivity as wilderness while also re-investing that carbon revenue into furthering new forest acquisition and conservation. SIG Carbon provided its expertise in forest carbon quantification and methodologies to model and develop the project for the voluntary carbon market. The Inlandsis Fund, which has supported over 40 carbon projects in multiple carbon markets, provided essential capital to fund initial costs of the initiative. Land trusts will be receiving both a prepayment they can use toward additional conservation work and an on-going revenue share as credits are issued and sold.
“The carbon credits generated on these wildlands will directly contribute to the enrolled landowners’ ability to protect thousands of wild acres across New England and New York,” Sophie Ehrhardt, Wild Carbon Specialist at Northeast Wilderness Trust said. “These wildlands not only store immense amounts of carbon, they also offer myriad co-benefits for nature and people. The Northern Forest is the second most carbon-rich ecosystem in North America, and our hope is that carbon finance will provide the incentive for many local land trusts to add their efforts to the growing movement to rewild large parts of the region.”
“SIG Carbon is honored to develop Wildlands Carbon with NEWT, Inlandsis, and northeastern land trusts,” said Erin Alvey, a Research Scientist at SIG Carbon who has been with the project since its inception. “This initiative sets a high bar for credit quality and climate action authenticity. The Forever-Wild conservation easements that permanently protect these forests even beyond the lifetime of the carbon offset project result in unparalleled carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and community benefits.”
“Inlandsis is very pleased to invest in NEWT’s pioneering initiative to expand forest carbon opportunities to landowners that until now could not realistically benefit from carbon markets. It is our second project in a growing partnership with NEWT and also close to our headquarters in Montreal,” said David Moffat, Managing Director at Inlandsis. “Wildlands Carbon is made possible by SIG’s carbon project development expertise. After launching our second fund in December, which is anchored by Fondaction Asset Management and Priori-T Capital, we are looking forward to deploying additional capital into projects throughout North America this year.”
All of the landowners taking part in this new venture are located in the Northeast region of the continental United States, but Wildlands Carbon could be the beginning of a complete shift in the carbon offsets market. Wildlands Carbon is the first forest carbon aggregation project for land trusts in the U.S. exclusively for properties that will be conserved with forever-wild conservation easements.