Exemplary Forestry Investment Fund Acquires 3,000-acre Maine Forest for Environmental and Financial Returns
Editor’s Note: This article has been adapted from the New England Forestry Foundation website.
Exemplary Forestry Management, together with its partners New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF), Maine Mountain Collaborative (MMC), and Quantified Ventures, recently announced the acquisition of the first forestland holding in its new Exemplary Forestry Investment Fund (EFIF) Initiative, the 3,000-acre Scammon Ridge Headwaters. The property was purchased from the Haynes Family of Winn, Maine.
Scammon Ridge. Photo © Isaac Crabtree/North Woods Aerial, courtesy of Maine Mountain Collaborative
The EFIF aims to eventually own 100,000 acres of Maine forest by raising approximately $90 million and manage them using the climate-smart Exemplary Forestry approach developed by NEFF to improve carbon storage, long-term forest health, wildlife habitat, and sustainable timber value and production in partnership with local communities. Significant to this acquisition was the sale by EFIF of a conservation easement to the Forest Society of Maine, which together with the Friends of Wilson Ponds Area raised the funding for the easement.
“I’m delighted we’ve reached this milestone after considerable research, planning, and collaboration that went into crafting the Exemplary Forestry Investment Fund, which is genuinely unique in the conservation field,” said Robert Perschel, NEFF Executive Director and an EFIF board member. “Now we’ll focus on judiciously scaling up this innovative program and building momentum, as we believe the Exemplary Forestry Investment Fund has immense potential to demonstrate to a global audience how productive, climate smart forestry can be accomplished at scale.”
NEFF and MMC launched Exemplary Forestry Management, a separate nonprofit entity that manages the Exemplary Forestry Investment Fund. The EFIF is meant to be a long-term timber investment fund initially conceived by NEFF staff that is intended for investors who are interested in a stable, long-term asset that seeks to deliver financial returns and measurable, real-world environmental results. The EFIF blends sources of capital from private equity, philanthropy, and government funding with the goal to produce monetizable climate and community outcomes that deliver multiple revenue streams and allow the EFIF to steward forests for the long term to produce durable forest health, carbon sequestration, improved wildlife habitat, and high-value forest products.
“This effort comes out of the conservation community in Maine,” said Bryan Wentzell, MMC Executive Director. “We are looking to create a new landownership and investment model whose financial goals are aligned with the ecological carrying capacity of the forest. We see this new landowner as a conservation and investment tool to complement existing conservation efforts.”
The land known as Scammon Ridge Headwaters is on the unceded homeland of the Wabanaki People. Please read more about Wabanaki land return and Wabanaki sovereignty efforts.
Photo © Jerry Monkman/EcoPhotography
About New England Forestry Foundation
Through the application of its core expertise in conserving forestland and advancing Exemplary Forestry, New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) helps the people of New England to sustain their way of life, protect forest wildlife habitat and ecosystem services, and mitigate and adapt to climate change. In partnership with land owners, NEFF has conserved more than 1.2 million acres of forest since its founding in 1944, including one out of every three acres of forestland protected in New England since 1999. It also owns and manages more than 150 Community Forests across the region. This makes NEFF the fourth-largest land trust in the United States by acres conserved.
About Maine Mountain Collaborative
The Maine Mountain Collaborative is a coalition of statewide, regional, and national conservation and forestry organizations bringing a shared focus and innovative vision to accelerate the pace and scale of conservation in one of the world’s most intact temperate forests.
About Quantified Ventures
Quantified Ventures (QV) works with pioneering organizations to design, capitalize, and scale investible solutions that improve the well-being of people and the planet. They catalyze impact for the greater good by pulling the levers of data, finance, innovation, partnerships, and policy to construct bold solutions that produce verified outcomes to address the most pressing environmental and social challenges facing communities. QV is a certified B Corporation and operates two complementary groups: Climate Finance and Health and Human Services.