RFFI in the News

Usal Redwood Forest group looks to state for forestry project funding
5/1/08, by Frank Hartzell, Fort Bragg Advocate-News

A new kind of logging company has arrived on the Mendocino County scene, promising to help bring back goliath trees and king salmon, eventually providing jobs, food, good quality lumber and help with global warming.

Partnership bidding for Pacific Lumber
1/16/08, by Mike Geniella, Santa Rosa Press Democrat

A consortium of conservation groups and private investors including Save the Redwoods League and the Bank of America [...the Nature Conservancy, Conservation Forestry LLC, Redwood Forest Foundation Inc. and Atlas Holdings LLC] announced Tuesday it will make a bankruptcy court bid for control of Pacific Lumber Co., and nearly 210,000 acres of prized North Coast timberlands.

Another Palco plan hatched
1/16/08, by John Driscoll, Eureka Times-Standard

A team of investors and conservation groups has formed to pitch its own plan to reorganize the bankrupt Pacific Lumber Co. by protecting its timberland from development but logging enough to maintain a sustainable milling operation.

Save the trees so the trees can save us
October, 2007, by Andrew Tolve, Ode Magazine

Redwood Forest Foundation intends to restore the forest to its natural state over the course of the coming century. In the meantime, the plans involve partnering with The Conservation Fund, a Virginia-based environmental group, to guard the land against future development. As the trees regenerate, local foresters will resume harvesting at a rate not exceeding 2 percent annually to preserve local jobs and help pay off the loan...

A Return on Redwoods
8/1/07, by Mark Fischetti, Scientific American Magazine

For years, special-interest groups have raised money to buy and rope off wild lands to protect them. But in June a unique partnership announced it had purchased 50,635 acres of northern California redwood forest and would preserve the land by operating it as a nonprofit business. The acquisition was funded entirely by private capital. The lead group, the Redwood Forest Foundation, Inc. (RFFI), in Gualala, Calif., claims the deal creates the first nonprofit working forest in the country and could be a model for safeguarding other natural resources.

"It's always difficult to get the first transaction done," says Don Kemp, executive director of RFFI and architect of the arrangement. "I'm hoping this one will be a catalyst for others."

Timber, Environmental Interests Join Forces to Prevent Fragmentation, Development
7/3/07, by Cristina Bauss, The Independent, Garberville

At RFFI's annual meeting on June 22, longtime Petrolia resident David Simpson, an environmentalist renowned for his theater work with wife Jane Lapiner, spoke of his first meeting with Harwood. "When I met him about 20 years ago, at the height of the timber wars, I was suspicious," he said. "He was the scion of a timber family! Over the years those suspicions have been allayed, peeled away like an onion. This is a restoration of trust between environmental and timber interests. This is a celebration."

Fast forward
6/28/07, by Hank Sims, North Coast Journal

"I firmly believe that there is a change in the way that the financial world is viewing environmental issues," said Mark Lovelace . . . "I think that there's a lot of opportunity for doing these kinds of things. Not taking land out of timber production - not locking it up in a park - but just finding a better model."

Nonprofit to by 50,635-acre forest
6/16/07, by Katie Mintz, Ukiah Daily Journal

"Our dream was to own and manage timberland for the community benefit, and this is the realization of that dream," Art Harwood, president of the Redwood Forest Foundation Inc., said Friday.

Nonprofit buys 50,000 acres of redwoods
6/15/07, by Tim Reiterman, Los Angeles Times

Harwood said the land, acquired from Hawthorne Timber Co., was heavily logged in the 1980s and '90s and now consists primarily of second-growth redwood and Douglas fir. "There are a few old-growth trees scattered out there, but we will not be cutting them," he said.

BofA Funds First Private Forest Conservation Purchase
6/15/07, by GreenBiz

The deal will protect a wide swath of the Usal redwood forest in Mendocino County, about 130 miles north of San Francisco, which as a region has seen a long struggle between environmental conservationists and logging and forestry interests.

Letter from Governor Schwarzenegger's office
6/14/07, by Mike Chrisman, California Secretary for Resources

On behalf of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, I would like to offer my congratulations to Redwood Forest Foundation, Inc. (RFFI) and Bank of America on their agreement to preserve 50,635 acres of Usal Redwood Forest. With the assistance of US Forest Capital, LLC, this exemplary agreement will serve as a model for privately-funded forest acquisition for conservation purposes.

Redwood Summer:
BofA in First Private Equity Forest Conservation Deal
6/14/07, by Todd Woody, Business 2.0

These days the threat to redwood forests is not so much from clear-cutting but from subdividing, said Pete Mattson, a foundation board member and chairman of the Sonoma Land Trust. Timber owners increasingly are finding it more profitable to sell off pieces of their land to developers than to log. "I've been anti-logging for a long time," Mattson told Green Wombat. "But now I've come to see that logging is critical to preserving forests and keeping wildlife corridors intact."

$65 million financing for Mendocino forest
6/14/07, by Tom Abate, San Francisco Chronicle

Lawrence Selzer, chief executive of the Conservation Fund, a national environmental group based in Virginia, praised the deal as an "innovative partnership ... to protect the ecologically rich and economically productive" forest. ...

Community-based ownership models work
5/14/07, by David Simpson, Eureka Times-Standard

RFFI became the first organization in the United States to be granted federal non-profit status expressly for the purpose of managing timber for harvest. It was able to do so because conservation was built into the very structure of the organization...