I am thrilled to welcome Heather Furman
as our plenary speaker for today.
Heather is the Appalachians Director
at the Nature Conservancy,
a position she has held since June.
In this role, Heather guides continental scale conservation
for one of the Conservancy's
four global priority landscapes,
leading teams and initiatives across 17 states
and three Canadian provinces.
Prior, Heather spent a decade
as the Conservancy State Director in Vermont,
where she grew the visibility, influence,
and scope of the Chapters Conservation programs.
Throughout her career,
Heather has provided strategic leadership in conservation,
working to integrate equitable approaches
and strengthening the partnerships,
funding, and scientific research needed
to protect biodiversity
and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Heather has held positions
in both federal and state government
and with local and international NGOs,
including the World Wildlife Fund in Nepal.
She has traveled extensively throughout Europe,
Latin America, and Asia
building on her formal academic training in anthropology
and natural resource planning.
Heather lives with her husband
in the Winooski River Watershed in rural Vermont
on the unceded land of the Western Abenaki
that's known today as the Northern Appalachians.
As we think about the theme of this year's conference,
considering forest as a piece of the solution
to a wide range of pressing environmental
and human health issues,
Heather's talk will synthesize efforts and concepts
around forest conservation and its many benefits.
Heather is a creative practitioner
working to realize the promises of forest conservation
across the region while thinking deeply
about how to approach this work for maximum impact
and with equity and justice implications in mind.
So it's with pleasure that I welcome her up to the stage.
(audience applauding)
Good morning, good morning.
Allison, thank you so much for that kind introduction.
It's really great to be here.
I've always been so impressed with FEMC
and the work that you all do in the field,
and it's great to have us all together.
The energy of being together, it feels really, really good.
So I am incredibly excited to set some context
for all of you today
and talk a little bit about the role our forests play
across this vast landscape that we call the Appalachians,
and why the forests right here in Vermont
and across the northeast
are actually some of the most important places
on the planet.
So I'm gonna start by asking you all
to zoom way, way out for just a minute.
I want you to think about a place on this little blue dot
that has meaning for you.
Maybe it's a place really close to home, near your backyard,
or maybe it's a place you've traveled to
that you can't get out of your head,
or maybe it's a place that you've never been,
but you really can just feel in your bones
is important to us as a global community,
and frankly, the future of our planet.
Maybe it's the jungles of the Amazon.
It's certainly one of the places that comes to mind for me,
the lungs of the Earth.
Or maybe it's Borneo,
home to some of the rarest species on the planet,
or the Serengeti,
or the Himalaya.
Well, for me, it wasn't until I left my upbringing in Ohio
that I first experienced this deep sense of connection
to something that is globally important.
When I was in my 20s,
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal,
and it was that moment for me that sparked my passion
for protecting ecosystems,
not just for their intrinsic value,
but for the contributions that these places around the world
and so many places that we feel connected to
make to our cultural heritage and the relationships
and dependencies that we humans have with our natural world.
And so several years ago,
the Nature Conservancy did one of the things
that the Nature Conservancy does pretty well.
The scientists at the Conservancy
did an analysis of all the places around the world
that are critical for biodiversity
and critical for carbon sequestration.
And the Appalachians absolutely popped off the map.
The Appalachians covers only about 8%
of the continental United States,
yet it stores 25% of our above ground carbon,
nine billion tons.
And for those of you who love our temperate broadly forests,
the ones that turn green and gold and orange in the fall,
this is the historic extent of those forests,
and this is what it looks like today,
only the Appalachians and parts of rural China
contain the concentrations of biodiversity
that we see in the world's temperate forest today.
So we're really fortunate that in the Appalachians,
we have significant forest conservation opportunities
with some of the most intact and connected landscapes
in the continental US.
But the truth is the majority, over 75%,
is not protected and still vulnerable to fragmentation
and poorly planned development.
And of course, the effects of climate change.
But what might be the greatest gift
of the Appalachians is its proximity to people
and all of the benefits
that our forests and our rivers provide.
So this is the geography of the Appalachians
that encompasses the Appalachians program
at the Nature Conservancy.
17 states, three Canadian provinces.
We actually are in the process of expanding this geography
into the Western Allegheny Plateau,
which includes parts of Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.
And as you can see on the map,
the orange areas represent our urban landscape.
Over 100 million people,
a third of the US population
live within a two-hour drive of the Appalachians,
and they depend on the Appalachians for their livelihoods,
clean drinking water, access to the outdoors,
and for the cultural connections
that many communities have with this landscape.
And so rightly, the Appalachians
is one of the Biden administration's
keystone initiative places for restoring land and water,
enhancing communities
by improving access to the outdoors
and addressing the legacy of environmental degradation
and pollution that exists in so many communities,
especially in the Central Appalachians.
And this landscape is also an economic engine.
It generates over 25 billion a year in recreation
and tourism economy,
not to mention
all of the other land-based economies of timber
and energy production.
And so for all of these reasons,
the biodiversity, the carbon sequestration,
the interdependency that people have with this landscape,
these are the reasons why the Nature Conservancy
named the Appalachians as one of the four global priorities
right up there with some of our most iconic places
around the world, the Amazon, Kenya,
and the Kalimantan and Borneo.
But as we know, our world is rapidly changing.
Perhaps you have seen this image,
it was produced by Nature Conservancy scientists
a few years ago,
and it's intended to demonstrate,
now it's not totally scientific,
it's just intended to demonstrate
how species are moving their ranges
in the face of climate change.
On average, 36 feet in elevation,
11 miles northward each decade
about four times the background rate of species
moving their ranges.
And in fact, some species have already reached the limit
of where they can go to find hospitable microclimates.
And climate change is not only driving species
to seek out new habitats, but it's affecting us too, right?
We know that climate change has a disproportionate impact
on the world's most vulnerable communities.
Many of us listened last week
as COP28 was happening in Dubai,
and we're hearing more
about what the United Nations environmental program
has called climate apartheid,
where the wealthy pay
or buy their way out to escape heat and hunger
and conflict
while the rest of the world is left to suffer.
And this is not a distant threat, here in the Northeast,
right here in Vermont,
we saw once again how climate change
is affecting human communities,
businesses in Montpelier that aren't coming back,
water contamination that goes on for months and even years.
This is my road.
This is my neighbor's house,
and what used to be their driveway,
a powerful reminder that we are not immune.
Many of the impacts are compounded onto other deeper,
longer term impacts of social and environmental injustices,
especially in our Black and brown communities.
Native and First Nations communities
were forcibly removed from much of the Appalachians
and separated from their traditional homelands,
fracturing generations of relationships
between communities and the natural world.
And in economically disenfranchised rural communities,
there are places across the Appalachians
that are left with a legacy of unsustainable
natural resource extraction, energy,
transition and job loss
that has left a wake of devastation
for both people and the environment.
So of course,
the question is what do we as scientists and practitioners,
as the conservation community,
and frankly as engaged societies,
what do we need to do
to address these challenges in the Appalachians?
Well, over my 25 years doing this work,
I don't think I've ever seen an opportunity for impact
as exciting and as critical as it is right now.
Our organizations and institutions see the urgency
for biodiversity and for climate.
They know that we're at an inflection point for the planet
and that we need to work together
with focus and determination.
And I truly believe that we are poised
to make the kind of progress that we need to
this critical decade.
So there are a lot of ideas
about how we should approach solutions
looking ahead to 2030 and beyond.
But because I work for the Nature Conservancy,
I wanna share with you how we are approaching this work
in the Appalachians
and how we're framing our impact
through the lens of connectivity, climate, and community.
So first, connectivity.
Every state in the Appalachians has a critical role to play
in creating and maintaining this 2,000 mile superhighway
for nature.
We need to maintain the connectivity
in order for species to move
and adapt as the climate changes, right?
We need all of us, land trusts, tribes, governments,
and communities to prioritize meaningful habitat protection
and connectivity for both terrestrial and aquatic species.
This is the long view.
On climate, the Appalachians is nothing short
of an insurance policy for the planet.
As I said earlier,
it stores nine billion tons of carbon.
And in order to maintain
and improve our forest ability to keep doing this,
we need to do three things.
We need to improve our forest health.
All of you are very familiar with that.
We need to make it economically viable
for private landowners to keep forests as forests.
And we need to ensure that our energy
and transportation infrastructure is complimentary
to this goal and not working against it.
And despite the urgency of this decade
and the urgency of this work,
we need to do this work
in the context of deep community engagement,
helping to build equitable approaches
to how we achieve these goals and empower local leadership.
And so how do we reconcile urgency with depth?
How do we go fast but also go slow?
How do we talk about scale when so much of the work
plays out on the ground and in places?
To hold this tension is something we all need
to become proficient at.
In the Appalachians, we have a shared vision
across this forested landscape
for a connected and resilient network of lands and waters,
an intact forest that stores carbon,
and also provides a myriad of benefits
for nature and people,
acting at the continental scale
to move faster means strengthening this vision
and translating that into broad conservation actions
that leverage policy and funding and science
and our values around equity and inclusion.
Adapting those to regional partnerships,
respecting local cultures and customs,
and then slowing down to engage meaningfully
at the local level through empowered local leaders.
So let me just share a little bit more about the vision
that we have at the Nature Conservancy for the Appalachians.
When it comes to protection and restoration,
our estimates are that between now and 2030,
we have the opportunity to protect
18 million acres across the Appalachians
and 5,200 river miles.
And so I hope that many of you
are familiar with the Conservancy's Resilience
and Connected Network Science.
This work comes out of our Center
for Resilience Conservation Science
led by Dr. Mark Anderson.
And over the course of more than a decade,
over 150 scientists identified
and mapped representative connected network
of climate-resilient lands that, if conserved,
could help sustain biodiversity into the future.
And as you can see in this slide,
some really critical linkage areas are needed
for permanent forest conservation long term.
And across the Appalachians geography
and the Continental and the United States,
only about 22% has been effectively conserved.
So we really have some work to do.
One way we can get more done
is simply by working smarter and working together.
So just a few weeks ago, at the end of November,
the Nature Conservancy launched our new Resilient
and Connected Appalachians Grant program
aimed specifically at supporting our partners,
other nonprofits, municipalities,
and tribal governments to engage in the Appalachians
and conserve more of this network.
This fund is a compliment
to our New York Climate Resilient Grant program.
It builds on the lessons that were learned there
over the course of three years,
and it just launched into six states,
New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
And we designed the program
specifically to be easy to use,
to cover costs that aren't usually eligible
from other grants.
And this year alone,
we aim to protect more than 20,000 acres
as a result of taking this high-level strategic view
of what needs to get done
to secure this network in the northeast.
When it comes to advancing natural climate solutions
using nature to store more carbon,
I believe we can make huge gains through reforestation
and improving the way that we manage our forests.
Our 18 million acre goal for forest land protection
includes more than 13 million acres in need of restoration.
So that means we all in this room need persistence
and we need innovative tools
and new ways to tackle our work at scale.
And so one way to look at this
is by looking at the landowners
who own large land holdings across the Appalachians.
Going a little further afield into the central
and southern Appalachians on public land,
we've made real gains in restoring keystone species
to their native habitat.
Elk that were extricated in the mid-19th century
were reintroduced in Kentucky in the mid-2000s
and are now moving their way back
into their historic ranges of Virginia and beyond.
Our Red Spruce Restoration Initiative
that has restored thousands of acres,
planting well over a million trees
in the Central Appalachians
where they were reduced to more than 90%
from unsustainable logging and subsequent fires.
And this species underpins the health
of the high elevation climate refugia
for hundreds of rare species.
And the reintroduction of prescribed fire.
Our Southern Appalachians director,
this is her in this picture,
who along with hundreds of newly-trained fire crews,
are applying techniques
that were practiced by Indigenous people of this region
for thousands of years.
And this approach is beginning to restore
the land of fire-adapted communities
on hundreds of thousands of acres of public land.
We've also had the opportunity
to engage with private landowners
to improve land management at scale.
And one example is through the Family Forest Carbon Program,
which you may have heard of.
Private forest landowners in the US collectively own more
than the federal government.
And while this program isn't perfect,
we know that all new and innovative approaches
take time to mature.
This represents an opportunity for landowners
with smaller parcels, 30 acres,
to receive payments for adopting practices
that promote carbon storage and sequestration,
making access to carbon markets more approachable
to a broader cross-section of people.
The program now exists in nearly every state
in the Appalachians in eight states.
We are currently enrolling over 470 landowners
who total more than 70,000 acres.
And we've pre-qualified 5,700 landowners
who control another 800,000.
And so we have an opportunity as practitioners
to continue to learn and improve our approach
so that the tools like the Family Forest Carbon Program
can continue to meet all the goals
that we have for our forest to keep them intact.
But as you know,
climate action is not just about sequestration
and resilience,
we need to address our infrastructure to guide placement,
to avoid the impacts to critical lands and waters
in our resilient and connected network.
If clean energy continues the way it has always gone,
one of the greatest threats
to our forests is further fragmentation from development.
In fact, the US will need an area the size of Texas
to meet our climate goals.
So as we push harder
to accelerate renewable energy deployment,
and let me be clear, we need to do this.
We have a great opportunity to repurpose developed land.
And so in the Central Appalachians,
especially in states like Kentucky and Pennsylvania
and West Virginia,
there are nearly 3/4 of a million acres
of former coal mine lands
that are providing opportunities to site renewable energy,
particularly solar.
At the Nature Conservancy,
we call this initiative Mining the Sun.
And importantly,
there are proud energy-producing communities
who wanna maintain a legacy of energy production
and do it in ways
that are fostering health for their communities
and for the lands that surround them.
And that brings me to not what we do,
but how we do it.
We have learned from decades of working with communities
that we are only going to be successful
when the people whose lives and livelihoods
that are being impacted by our conservation decisions
have power and ownership in those decisions.
Over the course of the last year,
our staff from across the Appalachians went on a journey
to examine how community ownership
and equity was showing up in our work.
These are not perfect examples
of community engagement and equity,
but they are places where we had something to learn.
And we learned that it's not enough
for durable long-lasting conservation
to just consult and involve communities in decisions,
but to actually share power and resources.
We also continue to learn
that the cultural and historical dimensions
of a place matter,
whether it's the coal fields of Kentucky
or the timber economies of Maine,
our willingness to acknowledge
some of the detrimental impacts
of our past practices on the land and water
have ripple effects to this day.
And our ability to engage in repair
of building relationships
and sharing the benefits of conservation
is absolutely essential
in order for us to move toward more sustainable
and equitable solutions.
And those solutions, I think, are within our grasp
because there are so many things that bind us together
across this incredible landscape.
Renowned author and Appalachian resident,
Barbara Kingsolver put it beautifully.
She said, "The Appalachians is both a region and a mindset.
Our devotion to place belies the fact
that we're hard to pin down on a map,
a swath of Highlands, coal country, and points north.
State lines make little sense here,
and we have more in common
with other mountain communities
than with the far ends of our state capitals.
Appalachia has few large cities.
Our economies are land-based,
and unless you live here,
we're probably not what you think."
So for me, this incredibly forested landscape
is a place of hope.
We have the opportunity right here in our own backyard
to have a global impact
that will help move us toward a future of resilience
and restoration and reconnection.
Thank you so much for having me.
(audience applauding)