A New Kind of Climate Stewardship: The Families Protecting America’s Forests 

In the early 1980s, Kathy and Jon McClure bought property in southwest Pennsylvania’s Beaver County, eager to have more space as they raised their two sons. But before long, they came to a startling realization: a century’s worth of farming had damaged the land. 

At first, Kathy says, “I assumed that if I just left everything alone and didn’t do any harm, that it would all come back by itself.”  

But although the land hadn’t been grazed in 30 years, new growth was failing to flourish; not even wildflowers would grow on the degraded acres. 

“I just can’t believe that nature didn’t heal,” recalls Kathy. “It takes a long, long time.” 

Across Pennsylvania, family forest owners like the McClures have discovered that caring for their land is far more complex than they once imagined. In the Pocono Mountains, Karren and Gerry DeSeve faced erosion along their beloved fishing creek as they wondered how to steward a forest that could be passed down to their grandson. And in Oswayo, where Edward and Katie Fisher founded a retreat for wounded soldiers, it was a constant struggle to keep up with management costs while preserving the woods that have become a place of healing for veterans like Edward.  

Regardless of their different circumstances, each landowner wrestled with similar challenges. In order to be good stewards, they needed better tools, resources, and support.  

Enter the Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP): the only improved forest management program specifically geared toward small landowners.  

Kathy McClure first learned about the program from a billboard as she drove down the Pennsylvania Turnpike. “It said, ‘The Family Forest Carbon Program: let your woods work for you,’” she remembers. “I thought, okay, I’m a family forest. Maybe this would work for me.” 

By participating in the FFCP, landowners like the McClures, the DeSeves, and the Fishers have received life-changing financial and technical support that allows their forests to thrive, benefiting both the climate and their own families. 

The Climate Benefits of Family Forests  

Across the United States, 11 million families collectively own nearly 40% of forest land, which surpasses federal and corporate ownership alike. In Pennsylvania, these family forests comprise part of the broader Central Appalachian ecoregion, one of the most ecologically important temperate forest regions in the world.  

Forest Ownership in the U.S.

(Source: US Forest Service National Woodland Owner Survey.)

The forests are essential to climate stability. In 2021, U.S. forests absorbed over 750 million tonnes of CO₂, roughly 12% of national emissions. Scientists believe that number could grow significantly if more family forests had the tools and resources to adopt climate-smart practices.  

Yet despite the scale and significance of these forests, most family owners have no formal guidance or support when it comes to their maintenance. An estimated 80% of family forest owners have never met with a forester, and almost 90% have no written management plan. Many of these owners assume that leaving land untouched is the safest choice, until invasive plants begin to spread, erosion worsens after storms, or woodland health declines over time.  

In the late 2010s, the American Forest Foundation (AFF) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) were seeing the same pattern across Pennsylvania and neighboring states: millions of acres of family-owned forests had untapped climate potential, yet the landowners didn’t have access to the solutions—including carbon finance—that they needed to effectively manage their properties. 

Making Traditional Carbon Markets Work for Small Landowners  

For decades, voluntary carbon markets focused on large, industrial forest tracts: projects spanning thousands, or even millions, of acres. These were the forests that could absorb the high cost of carbon accounting, meet rigorous monitoring requirements, and navigate the complex methodologies needed to prove real climate benefit.  

Family forests, by contrast, were effectively shut out.  

Traditional carbon protocols relied heavily on modeled baselines, i.e., projections of what might happen in a forest over time if no intervention occurred. These models required extensive data input, specialized technical expertise, and frequent updates. For a family with 200 or even 20 acres, the cost and complexity were prohibitive.  

The environment paid a price. Facing financial pressures such as high property taxes or unexpected expenses, many family forest owners turned to unsustainable harvesting as their only available income option. Often, that harvest took the form of high-grading, the practice of cutting the most valuable trees first, which degrades both biodiversity and long-term carbon storage by leaving only poorer quality trees.  

As Nathan Truitt, the American Forest Foundation’s executive vice president of climate funding, explains, the family farmers themselves aren’t to blame. Rather, it’s a systemic lack of guidance.  

“It’s not that landowners are making bad decisions; they’re making uninformed decisions,” he says. 

To unlock the climate potential of family forests, professional guidance is key. And so AFF and TNC began exploring whether a new approach, one based on actual observed forest change rather than predictions, could shift the field.  

They found their solution in the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis dataset: hundreds of thousands of plots measured regularly across the country, capturing how forests naturally grow, recover, or decline over time.  

The breakthrough was the development of a dynamic baseline approach. Instead of estimating hypothetical outcomes, each enrolled forest would be compared directly to a set of similar, unenrolled forests in the region. This “control group” method, commonly used in scientific trials, allows carbon benefits to be measured in a clear, evidence-based way.  

This innovation became the backbone of a new Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program methodology co-developed with Verra: VM0045 Improved Forest Management Using Dynamic Matched Baselines from National Forest Inventories.  

VM0045 is the first carbon methodology built specifically for small family forest owners. It sets clear rules to show that the climate benefit is real, and its dynamic baseline means that enrolled forests only receive carbon credits when they store more carbon than similar forests nearby.  

With this foundation, a new model for climate finance has taken shape to include the millions of families caring for small forest parcels across the country.  

How the Family Forest Carbon Program Supports Landowners  

For the families who enroll, the Family Forest Carbon Program begins with a conversation. Landowners start by answering a few simple questions online, and then AFF matches them with a forester. The forester visits their property, walking the woods with the landowners and discussing their concerns and long-term goals for the land.  

As a forester explained to Kathy McClure during a site visit, families retain control of their land. They decide what matters most: non-native plant removal, selective harvesting, protecting wildlife habitat, or safeguarding streams and wildflower meadows.  

From there, the forester develops a customized forest management plan for each family and, importantly, the program provides annual payments to support climate-smart practices over a 20-year commitment. The FFCP meets landowners where they are, giving them both the technical expertise and financial runway to manage their woods in a way that benefits their families and the environment.  

Using the VM0045 methodology, enrolled forests are periodically measured and compared to similar forests nearby. Only when enrolled forests are proven to store more carbon can credits be issued. The FFCP sells these credits on the voluntary carbon market, primarily to companies that want to go above and beyond their efforts to reduce emissions through business processes and supply chains. The profit from the credits helps keep the program running, enabling the FFCP to pay the family landowners. 

Because these payments arrive annually, the program offers families a reliable source of income to help their forests thrive for generations to come.  

Verified Impact: The First CCP-Labeled Credits Issued Under VM0045  

In late 2025, the program reached a defining milestone when Verra issued the first carbon credits with the Core Carbon Principles (CCP) label under VM0045 to the Family Forest Carbon Program’s Central Appalachia project (Verra Project 3996).   

The CCP label reflects the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s independent assessment that the methodology aligns with best practices for high-integrity carbon credits, including robust additionality, conservative quantification, and strong safeguards against over-crediting. 

Following the issuance of the first CCP-labeled credits under VM0045, the Family Forest Carbon Program then delivered 15,000 of those credits to its first buyer, REI Co-op. By choosing credits that meet the Core Carbon Principles, buyers are reinforcing the importance of credibility. High-integrity standards, transparent measurement, and independent verification are the foundation of trust.  

Beyond Carbon: What This Protects  

While carbon finance provides the measurable backbone of the Family Forest Carbon Program, the changes on the ground reach far beyond a single metric.  

Across Pennsylvania’s family-owned forests, enrollment in the FFCP has translated into more active, informed stewardship that addresses long-standing ecological challenges landowners struggled to confront on their own.  

For Kathy McClure, that means finally understanding the scope of invasive species spreading through her woods. After decades of assuming nature would recover if left alone, her forester’s visit revealed how plants like tree of heaven, Japanese honeysuckle, multiflora rose, and burning bush were edging closer to sensitive areas, including the woodlands and wildflower habitats she cherished. With professional guidance and financial support, she has begun taking action to help it function as a healthy system again.  

Similar patterns appear across other enrolled properties. In the Pocono Mountains, the DeSeve family is working to protect a creek that feeds into the Delaware River watershed, which supplies drinking water to major cities including Philadelphia and New York. Their forest management plan goes beyond carbon storage to address erosion, soil health, encroaching non-native vegetation, and long-term regeneration so the land remains healthy for future generations.  

For the Fishers, community impact is at the heart of stewardship. The LEEK Hunting and Mountain Preserve, their nonprofit that provides outdoor recreation and healing space for wounded veterans, exists on forested land. Through the Family Forest Carbon Program, selective harvesting guided by professional foresters has increased the land’s ability to serve both people and wildlife.  

In each case, carbon finance has given families the resources to address ecological pressure from non-native plants, protect waterways, improve forest structure, and make decisions rooted in long-term resilience rather than short-term necessity.  

“Woods are a habitat, not just a pile of lumber,” says Kathy McClure. “It’s a system, and we need to keep that system healthy.” 

Through the Family Forest Carbon Program and the carbon markets, family landowners are helping ensure that these systems endure.  

Verra Perspective

AFF's Central Appalachia project illustrates how robust methodology design can help address a practical access challenge in forest carbon markets. VM0045’s dynamic matched-baseline approach provides a pathway for high-integrity improved forest management accounting, supporting family forest owners in translating long-term stewardship into measurable climate outcomes.

Emilio Vilanova

Senior Program Officer, Forest Carbon | Verra

Client Perspective

Verra has been an instrumental innovation partner pioneering high-quality dynamic baselines for Natural Climate Solutions, with the first-ever dynamic baseline in VM0045. FFCP is proud to be the first project to issue credits under this methodology, and we look forward to the impact it unlocks for high-quality IFM at scale for our projects and beyond.

Lynn Riley

Lynn Riley | American Forest Foundation