Carbon Credit

   This morning i received a phone call from my good friend, the Hon. John Garbini, of Wonder Earth Partners.  John has been talking to Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber about a plan to keep valuable trees standing as a carbon reserve, rather than cutting the trees for profit and starting again from scratch.  Doc is a partner in WEP and consults from time to time on a timber of forestry and science issues.

   Back in the early oughts, Doc had a Forest Zone program through ONRRI, that set out and measured 13 plots on the Safe Harbor property 660 acres) in Boomer Creek, Oregon.  The permanent plots were GPS'ed for location and every tree in the range was tagged with an aluminum number stuck on an aluminum nail (iron nails affect tree health - aluminum does not oxidize inside a tree).  We did calculations and projections with the aid of high school students from the Phoenix School in Roseburg, OR and other local high schools.

  Once trained in measuring diameter at breast height (dbh) and tree height,  we did calculations and projections on tree growth (carbon sequestration) for 50 years.  It is now ten years later and time to go back and measure these plots again.  The entire program is a biology friendly means of doing forestry - similar to my current work developing bio-friendly mining.

   The group was trained well enough that the US Forest Service used our student volunteers to conduct a white pine blister rust survey in the Diamond Lake Forest District.  Another good friend, Rick Abbott, led the program which gave valuable work experience to jobless teens (under 18 , no right to work).  Makes me wonder how we expect youth to be trained to enter the workforce when they are prohibited from everything but pretending to go through the motions.

   At any rate - Wonder Earth Partners is looking at receiving some major funding from the State of Oregon to implement the process of change.  Check out the site and support remember to support Gaia when working in resource extraction.  She supports us and life is changing rapidly - i believe for the better.

Namaste'    doc