Bringing the Marsh Back Home
A living shoreline project in Louisiana promises to revive Lake Pontchartrain's missing marshes, with help from the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal funding.
Climate Change Stories
How Federal Funds are Helping Families Revive Their Forests
Forester Jack Lampman guides small-scale landowners who want healthier forests, all thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.
Jack Lampman owes his career to a light-up map. When he was a boy, during one of his family’s summer trips to New York’s Adirondack Mountains, he remembers pushing a button on a map display of the region. It revealed a photo of Tear of the Clouds, a small, picturesque lake at the foot of Mt. Marcy. “That’s got to be such a cool place,” Lampman, now 26, recalls thinking. “I want to be up there.”
Later, in college, he began hiking the area’s mountains, and would eventually go on to summit the Adirondacks’ 46 highest peaks. Although he’d been planning to move to Washington, D.C., after graduation to pursue a career in politics, these hikes made him realize his true calling lay in the great outdoors.
The Inflation Reduction Act—the United States government’s biggest-ever investment in climate action—has helped him realize this dream. An IRA grant covers Lampman’s salary as an outreach forester for the Family Forest Carbon Program, a joint effort of The Nature Conservancy and the American Forest Foundation.
Lampman now grapples with problems far tougher than summitting dozens of mountains. While New York’s forests are currently in good health, trouble is on the horizon. Invasive pests, diseases and unnaturally high deer numbers are taking their toll, threatening these forests’ ability to act as a natural solution to climate change. Lampman works with an overlooked but essential group of forest owners—individuals and families who own small parcels of forestland—to help them improve their forests' health for the long term, and get paid to do it.
Battling bittersweet
Jack Lampman stands in a thicket of round leaf bittersweet, a fast-growing invasive vine that is difficult to eradicate.
Diseased trees
This beech is afflicted with beech bark disease, which came to North America from Europe in the 1800s. This disease is one of several posing a severe threat to New York's forests.
How the IRA creates conservation jobs
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, is the federal government’s biggest-ever investment in climate action. This law has already provided hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy and conservation projects, including an array of programs to restore forest, waterway and soil health.
The IRA’s investments are expected to create 9 million new jobs between 2022 and 2032, including 600,000 jobs protecting “natural infrastructure” such as forests and wetlands. These jobs include positions for foresters, scientists, engineers, construction workers, loggers, support staff and more.
Deer, pests and invasive plants are imperiling New York’s forests
Whenever Lampman tromps through the woods, he sees signs of trouble. Stands of dead ash trees, killed by an invasive insect called the emerald ash borer. Hemlocks succumbing to the woolly adelgid, another invasive pest. Then there’s the slew of aggressive invasive plants—barberry, knotweed and round leaf bittersweet—that outcompete native species and can take years of work to eradicate.
But for Lampman, the most worrisome threat comes on four legs. Deer are mowing down seedlings and saplings before they have a chance to grow into mature trees. “A lot of times what I'm seeing, especially in southern New York State, is there's no new trees growing,” Lampman says. Historically, hunters and predators kept whitetail deer in check. But wolves and mountain lions were exterminated from the state in the 1800s, and as hunting has lost popularity, deer numbers have exploded.
Assessing a Forest's Health
Family forest owners can help restore healthy forests—but they face challenges
Small-scale forest owners play an outsize role in the fight against these threats. Of New York’s roughly 18 million acres of forestland, 57% are owned by families and individuals. Put together, family forest owners in the United States are responsible for 39% of all forestland—more than all other ownership groups, including the federal government.
Most family forest owners do not have plans to harvest their trees and sell the timber, Lampman says. But life can get in the way. When there’s a big expense—college tuition, a medical emergency, a new roof—an unplanned timber harvest can be a source of quick cash.
This can lead to problems. Access to professional forestry advice is expensive, and fewer than 20% of family forest owners seek out the help of foresters. As a result, when they decide to harvest their forests, they can cut down too many trees, or take only the biggest and healthiest ones, putting the long-term health of their land at risk.
“Owning a forest is good spiritually and physically,” Lampman says. But if you own a forest and don’t plan for its future, he says “it’s potentially at risk.”
The Family Forest Carbon Program pays landowners to conserve their forests
The Family Forest Carbon Program eases this financial burden by paying landowners to keep their forests intact. The program helps landowners implement management practices that are scientifically proven to capture more carbon and improve forest health. Participating landowners receive an annual, per-acre payment, as well as a free, site-specific management plan developed by a professional forester. They also have access to a forester for the life of the contract and beyond.
When Lampman visits the land of someone looking to enroll in the program, he looks for a variety of things to determine eligibility and guide management decisions. He makes sure there is sufficient acreage of eligible forest, and studies whether the understory is lush with seedlings, or whether it has been nibbled to the ground by deer. He also makes note of soil types, wildlife and important habitats such as wetlands.
Based on this, Lampman determines whether the landowner qualifies for the program, and then pens a detailed management plan with year-by-year advice. He also directs participants to state and federal programs that can help them secure even more funding for forest health improvements, such as installing fencing to protect young trees from deer, or planting seedlings to replace those killed by pests.
Investing in the future of New York’s forests—and a stable climate
FFCP has proven popular. Since launching in New York two years ago, the program has enrolled 53 New York landowners whose properties cover a collective 6,300 acres. Another 1,200 people—representing 163,000 acres—are waiting in the assessment queue. Nationally, FFCP has enrolled over 100,000 acres, an area roughly the size of Denver.
Most landowners participate in the program to offset property taxes, Lampman explains. But many also have a conservation mindset. Two such landowners, a married pair of wildlife biologists, had spent “a lot of their career stuck behind a desk,” Lampman says. Wanting a wilderness of their own, they moved to the Adirondacks and bought a couple hundred acres of forest. Lampman helped the couple enroll in FFCP, and is now working with them to get a conservation easement, which will permanently protect their land from commercial and residential development.
Lampman shares the couple’s aversion to long hours indoors. Of a recent 22-mile day hike, he quips, “I’m willing to suffer for extended periods of time just to be out in the woods.” And thanks to the IRA, Lampman can make a career of being in his happy place.
Stay in the Loop
Get conservation stories, news and local opportunities from where you live.
More Inflation Reduction Act Stories
The Inflation Reduction Act is the U.S. government's biggest-ever investment in climate action. Read stories of how the IRA is bringing tangible benefits to people and nature.
