Small privately or family-owned forestland accounts for the largest share of the U.S. forestland, at 39%. Yet, the majority of these land have difficulty participating in the carbon offset market.
Sara Velazquez and her husband Dan Nelson, who purchased the 55 acres behind their rural Pennsylvania home in 2019, planning to start preserving and resuscitating the hilly forestland. However, the pandemic forced them both out of work.
Just when they worried about how to pay the annual taxes on the land, they found an alternative to logging.
In December 2021, the couple signed a 20-year contract with the nonprofit American Forest Foundation’s Family Forest Carbon Program, which aims to help small-scale landowners with as little as 29 acres access fast-growing “carbon markets.”
Velazquez and Nelson’s forest can absorb and store carbon for at least the next two decades. They can sell credits earned from carbon reduction to help corporations move toward their net-zero targets.
