New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) has launched its climate-smart forestry incentives program for commercial landowners, defined by NEFF as those who own more than 10,000 acres. In summer 2024, NEFF selected a cohort of six landowners to participate in the first round of the program: Robbins Lumber Company, Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, The Baskahegan Company, Fallen Timber LLC, Clayton Lake Woodlands and Seven Islands Land Company. They will receive incentives that support a range of climate-smart forestry practices designed to increase carbon in the forest and in resulting wood products.
NEFF’s Climate-Smart Commodities project includes forestry incentive programs for commercial forestlands, Tribal Nations forestlands, and smaller private forestland ownerships. Taken together, these incentive programs aim to enroll 66,000 acres of working forests throughout the duration of the five-year project.
NEFF staff has researched and defined a set of climate-smart forestry practices for the Commercial Landowner Incentive Program that is consistent with USDA requirements. The six projects NEFF has selected will pull from it to put climate-smart forestry on the ground across 12,000 acres of commercial forestland in Maine, with landowners implementing projects in 2024 and 2025. These six landowners compose the first of three Commercial Landowner Incentive Program cohorts.
NEFF estimates that the acres enrolled in this first round have the potential to store an additional 250,000 MtonsCO2e as compared to current practices. These results will be tested and determined based on modeling that will be a key part of the project. This initial, directional estimate shows that over the coming decades, this additional carbon storage could offset the amount of carbon emitted from the energy used annually to heat and cool 23,000 homes.
Additional rounds of commercial forestland project proposals will be solicited in 2025 and 2026, and interested commercial landowners can apply during NEFF’s next Request for Proposals (RFP) in winter 2024–2025. Contact NEFF at dhohl@newenglandforestry.org to sign up for the RFP mailing list.
NEFF issued a Request for Proposals in spring 2024 inviting commercial forest landowners across New England to participate in the first round or Design Phase of the Commercial Landowner Incentive Program. For the first phase of the program, NEFF sought landowners interested in helping to inform overall program design and application of climate-smart forestry practices on commercial forestlands. NEFF is now working with program participants to define implementation guidelines, monitoring approaches, and other program elements.
Overall, the Commercial Landowner Incentive Program will provide approximately $10.5 million in climate-smart forestry incentives on commercial forestlands across the region.
The goal of the program’s first round or Design Phase is to develop, test and refine the program, and this initial round will specifically help test NEFF’s approach to the design of our incentives for landowners; refine the climate-smart forest practices landowners will implement; and inform the measurement, monitoring, reporting and verification work needed to track and model carbon and ecological outcomes of the program. Learn more.
The NEFF team will use lessons learned from the Design Phase to shape the next two larger rounds of commercial climate-smart forestry incentives within our overall Climate-Smart Commodities project.
NEFF and the landowners selected in 2024 are working together to determine specific acres to be treated with climate-smart practices. On average, the managed area is 2,000 acres per company. Incentive payments are determined based on the forestry practices to be applied in each project.
Robbins Lumber Company is based in Searsmont, Maine and manages 30,000 acres of forestland in the Midcoast and Downeast regions. The company operates three sawmills that produce pine lumber. NEFF’s collaboration with Robbins Lumber will take place at their property near Nicatous Lake and will focus on pre-commercial thinning, early commercial thinning, crop tree release and timber stand improvement to grow high-grade white pine.
Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands manages 630,000 acres of working forests across the state, revenues from which help fund state parks and conservation efforts. NEFF will work with the Bureau on its lands near Round Pond and Telos Lake in northern Maine, where it will focus on pre-commercial thinning and early commercial thinning in dense young forests that were purchased by the state after spruce budworm infestation and clearcutting in the 1970s.
The Baskahegan Company is based in Brookton, Maine and has been managing 100,000 acres of forests Downeast for a century. NEFF will work with the company on early commercial thinning and crop tree release of northern hardwoods, and planting of spruce in understocked forest stands.
Fallen Timber LLC is a 481,000-acre forest ownership in northern Maine. NEFF will work with the company in its timberlands at Northeast Carry near Moosehead Lake to pre-commercially thin dense young softwood stands regenerating after clearcutting by previous owners.
Clayton Lake Woodlands manages around 323,000 acres in northern and eastern Maine. NEFF will work with the company in the Allagash River region on diverse climate-smart practices, including crop tree release of potential sawtimber trees and long-term retention of legacy trees for in-forest carbon storage.
Seven Islands Land Company manages 819,000 acres in northern and western Maine that have been in the Pingree family since 1841. NEFF and the company will design a diverse set of practices including crop tree release of northern hardwoods, pre- and early commercial thinning of spruce-fir stands and planting non-merchantable stands to spruce.
(See below for glossary)
Take a look at the climate-smart forestry practices that NEFF staff foresters and scientists have researched and defined for the Commercial Landowner Program. NEFF’s intention is that all practices, even those primarily aimed at increasing productivity or carbon storage, will be implemented in a way that increases adaptation—defined as increasing the forest’s capacity for resistance, resilience, and/or transition to future climate—where feasible.
If you’d like to read NEFF’s list of forestry practices for the Commercial Landowner Program or the practices the 2024 landowners are pursuing, the glossary of forestry terms from our Exemplary Forestry Resources webpage may prove helpful.
If you have questions about elements of the RFP, please send them to Catrina Vear at cvear@newenglandforestry.org. You can also contact other members of the project team if you choose. In all cases, questions asked and answers provided will be posted here as publicly available information.
NEFF’s Climate-Smart Commodities, Large Commercial Forest Landowner Incentive Program is funded through the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. To receive funds, it is mandatory for the landowner or operator to establish records with USDA Farm Service Agency.
We will need to verify that your records cover the area where you plan to implement Climate-Smart Forestry practices. If they do, then you do not need to reestablish records.
Applicants should establish records after they are chosen for NEFF’s Climate-Smart Commodities Large Commercial Forest Landowner Incentive Program: Round 1 Design Phase. Applicants only need to establish records on the land where Climate-Smart Forestry practices are being implemented.
Yes, the instructions can be found by clicking the following button.
You need to fill out two worksheets to establish records with USDA Farm Service Agency. 1) AD-1026 Highly Erodible Land Conservation (HELC) and Wetalnd Conservation (WC) Certification. Please see the following instructions for establishing records with USDA FSA.
NEFF has asked USDA Farm Service Agency to provide details on how personal information provided on the CCC-901 is kept confidential and whether is exempt from a FOIA request. We will post what we learn as it comes to NEFF from USDA.
We have not set specific dollar or acreage targets for each round, but we expect the first (Design Phase) round to be smaller than the two following rounds.
We are looking for projects that address hundreds to low thousands of acres for the first round. We will provide further guidance ahead of future rounds, once we have learned from the Design Phase round. We anticipate subsequent rounds to allow for larger projects.
Because this is a design round, we are looking to fund projects across a range of geographical areas, forest types, forest conditions, and practices. We do not anticipate allocating all of the funds in one round on a single proposal. Overall, we seek to balance the expected climate benefits with the desire to trial this approach in a diversity of situations.
Responses to this RFP are due June 7, 2024. Evaluation of proposals and decisions will be made within approximately one month or around July 10, 2024.
We do not expect landowners to conduct an analysis of greenhouse gas outcomes by themselves. Any data or assistance that landowners or managers can provide NEFF and its partners/subcontractors to support the measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification of greenhouse gas outcomes from project activities is welcome and will be considered as part of applications for this RFP. Especially for the Design Phase round, willingness and capacity to collaborate on measurement ad modeling will be considered in proposal evaluation.
For this RFP, the details of the measurement and monitoring protocols will be worked out collaboratively by NEFF and the landowner/manager. A pre-treatment inventory will be required to demonstrate that the proposed practices are applicable for the proposed area. A post-treatment inventory of the treated area will also be required in order to verify that practices were implemented to the specifications agreed upon and to provide data for modeling of future carbon benefits. NEFF will not require ongoing monitoring beyond these two inventories, but applicants are encouraged to propose ways they can contribute to NEFF’s efforts to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of this program, including through ongoing monitoring where practicable.
Yes; an entity such as a forest management company can apply to participate in the program as an “operator,” rather than an owner, as long as the operator has a written agreement with the landowner authorizing them to manage the land. In this case it is the operator who would share information about its ownership structure. The entity that establishes records with USDA Farm Service Agency will receive the payments for the practices completed.
No. If the evaluation committee selects your application to participate in NEFF’s Large Commercial Forest Landowner Incentive Program: Round 1 Design Phase, and you learn that the program is not compatible with your companies’ operations, then you have the option to withdraw your application.
NEFF is running its incentive program for family forest owners in four states with American Forest Foundation through its Family Forest Carbon Program, will launch an incentive program for smaller-acreage landowners in southern New England in fall 2024, and our Tribal Nations incentive program has begun and will unfold through 2024.
However, the Climate-Smart Commodities project doesn’t just work with landowners—we’re also building market demand for climate-smart forest products; providing climate-smart forestry incentives and training to foresters and loggers; and engaging in monitoring, verification, and reporting to document and ensure the project’s additive carbon benefit.
This pilot project is a key first step for NEFF’s 30 Percent Solution, which aims to fully leverage regional forests in the fight against climate change, including by significantly expanding the use of NEFF’s own approach to climate-smart forestry, Exemplary Forestry. This solution could pull enough CO2 from the atmosphere to provide 30 percent of the emissions reductions we need to meet the region’s net-zero goals.
