Paul Martin

Paul Martin spent more than a decade searching for land in northern Wisconsin. For the last two years, roughly half of their land has been enrolled in the Family Forest Carbon Program. It calculates how much carbon is stored in trees, then sells the credits to companies to offset their carbon emissions… When it comes to carbon credits from forestland, the market has traditionally been open to corporations or governments that own thousands of acres of trees. More programs are popping up to help smaller landowners get into the carbon market. Family forests, those owned by individuals or families, make up nearly 40% of all forestland in the U.S. The Family Forest Carbon Program is a relatively new program from the American Forest Foundation in partnership with the Nature Conservancy. Its focus is on getting those people who own smaller forests into the carbon market — with as little as 30 acres of qualified trees.