Community Forests

Standing at the foot of a towering old-growth pine tree and gazing up at its highest branches with a combination of respect and awe, Don Hamann places a hand on the trunk. “I was looking at one of these nice trees as I drove by, and I thought, ‘Well, we could cut this tree one time and sell it and get some money out of it and it’s gone,’” Hamann, the longtime Butte Falls, Oregon, resident says. “Or we could turn this into a little bit of ecotourism and sell this tree over and over and over again.”

That’s exactly what the town of Butte Falls did when it purchased the local forest from a private timber company. Trust for Public Land helped the town secure funding to purchase the land. It’s a model we’ve adopted across the country to help communities take ownership and control of their nearby resources.

The Power of Community Forests

Community forests are becoming a powerful tool for residents to protect and manage their local landscapes. As a source of timber-related jobs and income derived from outdoor recreation, these forests help strengthen local economies. They also preserve open space while inspiring community engagement and collaboration, as people work together to identify and achieve shared conservation goals. This report identifies and expands on the values provided by community forests.

What’s at Stake

As the effects of climate change are felt more acutely, community forests can make rural areas more resilient while sequestering the carbon dioxide responsible for global warming.

It’s possible to build more climate resilience in Oregon and Washington, safeguard our economy, and make communities more livable every day, with more green spaces. The Upper Wenatchee Watershed Community Lands Plan identifies 35,000 acres of privately owned forest lands in Washington, which, if conserved, have the greatest potential to achieve the community’s conservation goals including preventing catastrophic wildfires and supporting local economies. Conserving forests in this watershed will maintain habitat connectivity, build climate resilient communities, and improve recreational opportunities and access. We are currently working with our partners to transfer these 35,000 acres of forestland in the Upper Wenatchee Watershed. 

Our Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities program protects communities from catastrophic wildfires and maximizes the power of our forests to combat climate change.  

TPL’s Land and People Lab applies rigorous evidence and state-of-the-art analysis to accelerate the national movement for parks and public land. We inform policies and practices, build partnerships, and share resources to expand access to the outdoors. This year, the lab released a first-of-its-kind Conservation Carbon Map. The new interactive map connects data on carbon captured by forests to parcel-level land data to determine where conservation can have the greatest climate impact. 

Throughout the Pacific Northwest, forests are increasingly at risk of fragmentation and commercial development. TPL is working to protect these lands to conserve habitats and natural ecosystems, create jobs, and support recreation. Thirty-four percent of Oregon forests and 36 percent of Washington forests remain privately owned. We are working to conserve 55,000 acres (about twice the area of Manhattan) of critical, high-priority forest by 2030.

By 2060, New England is projected to lose 1.2 million acres of forest, along with 19 percent of its carbon-storage capacity. A 2017 study by Harvard Forest, a research center at Harvard University, found that 65 acres of forest in New England were disappearing daily.

In Maine, two thirds of the population is farther than a 10-minute walk from a park or public open space. On top of that, 23 percent of Mainers are farther than a 10-minute drive to public open space. The state is well-known for its sweeping public lands in remote areas—and use of these areas continues to increase—but smaller, more accessible public lands are clearly needed.

Protection of our forested landscapes in New England and across the country is one of the best strategies we have to save this precious resource and combat climate change.

What We’ve Achieved

Trust for Public Land is a national leader in the growing community forest movement, which started in New England 20 years ago and has since spread across the United States.

We’ve worked closely with towns and nonprofit groups from New Hampshire to Wisconsin to Oregon, helping create community forests that reflect local values and fulfill residents’ vision for the future.

Since 2001, we’ve established or expanded 30 community forests, totaling more than 30,000 acres. We were also a founding member of the Community Forest Collaborative, which successfully advocated for federal funding to support community forests. Established in 2014, the Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program has been a critical resource for towns interested in gaining control of their forests.