news story / By Heidi Walters

Mr. Van Eck’s Forest

A patch of woods is the test case for a new climate strategy

(Dec. 6, 2007)  Fred Marinus van Eck loved trees. The New York City investment banker owned thousands of acres of them all over the world. And it wasn’t only their cool, fragrant, fern-swept, critter-harboring selves that enchanted him, but their potential — he loved working trees, timber. And one patch he was particularly fond of was the nearly 2,100-acre redwood forest he bought in 1969 on the Pacific Northwest coast, sandwiched between tiny Fieldbrook and now-sprawling McKinleyville.

Once a year, van Eck would fly out from New York to wander through his California woods. They’d been hammered in the past — heavily logged in the 1800s, and again in the 1950s. Now van Eck was watching the property grow into what he hoped would be a different sort of working forest: one with a redwood-dominant mix of species and different-aged trees supporting wildlife while growing big timber. Sylvia Garlick, a McKinleyville real estate agent who befriended the rather shy van Eck, often accompanied him on his walks.

A sunny day in the van Eck forest. Photo by Heidi Walters.

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“I always remember one time in particular,” said Garlick. “We were walking on the property and he had a pair of clippers, and he would stop and snip the redwoods — the little ones, trees about a foot tall. He was pruning.”

Jim Able, who managed this forest for van Eck for 30 years, says his annual working stroll with van Eck was like “somebody reviewing your master’s thesis. He asked you everything, from weather patterns to forest types.” He’d check on individual trees and quiz Able about their readiness for harvest.

Van Eck’s scrutiny was but a foreshadowing of what was to come. Today the climate change community is eyeballing this sky-reaching swatch of dark green, slowly reclaiming time just miles from the Pacific Ocean, with particular intensity. It could be a bright new hope on the global warming front: the working forest/carbon credit grocery store.

Already the celebs have come shopping: Earlier this year Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bought some carbon credits from the van Eck to offset some of the considerable carbon dioxide generated by his traveling. Nancy Pelosi, Fabian Núñez and California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Linda Adams likewise bought some van Eck cred. And big utilities like PG&E are talking about using forest credits.

Mr. van Eck, if he were alive (he died in 2000 at 82), might be amazed. Perhaps even pleased. But his old forester, Jim Able, is frankly a little perplexed. The van Eck forest is now managed under a conservation easement by the Pacific Forest Trust for the Fred M. van Eck Forest Foundation. (The foundation was formed when van Eck willed his forest, under condition it remain a forest, and a $21 million endowment to Purdue University to support one of its forestry research programs.) The PFT let go of Able’s firm and hired a new forestry management team last year. They’re good foresters, says Able, but he questions the PFT’s claim that the van Eck now will remove 500,000 tons more of CO2 from the atmosphere — tons that count as credits that can be sold — over the next 100 years (and produce 170 million board feet).

What are they doing out there that’s different from Able’s light-harvest, selective approach? How will they sequester more carbon? The answer requires some mental gymnastics.

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