New England is one of the most heavily forested corners of the United States, with woodlands covering the majority of the landscape from the Maine North Woods to the hills of Vermont. For most people, these forests are cherished as scenery, recreation, and a way of life. But they are also something far more powerful and often overlooked: one of the most effective, ready-to-use tools we have for fighting climate change. Research by the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) shows that, managed and protected wisely, the region's forests could deliver nearly a third of the emissions reductions New England needs. As the sixth-largest land trust in the country, NEFF pairs hands-on land protection with cutting-edge science to unlock exactly this potential. This guide explains how forests work as forest climate solutions, and how NEFF is turning that promise into measurable results.
Why forests are one of our best climate tools
The science behind forests and climate is elegantly simple at its core. As trees grow, they pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and lock it away in their wood, roots, and the surrounding soil. A healthy, growing forest is therefore a vast, living carbon sink, quietly removing greenhouse gases year after year at a scale and cost no technology can currently match. This is what makes forests a cornerstone of what scientists call "natural climate solutions."
New England is unusually well placed to benefit, with roughly 32 million acres of forestland across the region. Yet much of that potential currently goes untapped. An independent analysis by the Highstead Foundation, aligned with NEFF's own research, found that New England's forests could sequester at least 20 percent of the region's current emissions — and, if states meet their goals, could offset the large majority of remaining emissions over 30 years. In other words, the forests are already helping, but with the right stewardship they could do dramatically more. Realizing that potential is one of the most cost-effective forms of climate change climate change mitigation available to the region, delivering clean air, wildlife habitat, and flood protection as valuable co-benefits. The question NEFF set out to answer was a practical one: how do we get forests to store the most carbon possible, while keeping them healthy, working, and wild?
Exemplary Forestry: managing forests for carbon and life
NEFF's answer challenges a common assumption. Many people imagine that the best thing for a forest's climate value is simply to leave it alone. NEFF's science points to a more nuanced truth: while wild, unharvested reserves are genuinely important, actively and skillfully managing much of the working landscape can store even more carbon over time — if it's done right. That "done right" is the crucial part, and it's what NEFF calls Exemplary Forestry.
Exemplary Forestry is NEFF's trademarked, science-based framework for sustainable active management. Rather than either conventional, short-sighted logging or complete hands-off preservation, it guides forests toward better stocking and faster growth of high-value trees, retains particularly old trees and stands for their exceptional carbon storage, and safeguards wildlife habitat and ecological health throughout. The result is a forest that keeps growing, keeps storing carbon, and keeps producing sustainable timber — all at once. Crucially, this is not just theory: NEFF's modeling of the carbon benefits of Exemplary Forestry in New England's Acadian Forest has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Forests, meaning its climate math has passed independent scientific scrutiny. With tailored standards for different forest types, from the Acadian Forest to the central and transition hardwoods, it offers a practical blueprint for landowners across the region.
The 30 Percent Climate Solution: four forest-based strategies
Exemplary Forestry is the centerpiece of NEFF's flagship climate initiative, the 30 Percent Solution — a holistic strategy demonstrating that forests could provide close to a third of the CO2 reductions New England needs over the next three decades. According to NEFF's analysis, the approach could keep more than 646 million metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere over 30 years. It works by combining four complementary, forest-based climate solutions into a single integrated system.
The first and most powerful is spreading improved forest management, expanding Exemplary Forestry across the managed portion of the landscape, which NEFF's research identifies as by far the largest opportunity. The second is stopping the net loss of forests to development, since each acre of New England forest stores roughly 160 metric tons of CO2, and preventing that clearing could save on the order of 81 million metric tons over 30 years. The third and fourth both involve building with wood: storing carbon within the wood of new buildings through mass timber construction, and avoiding the enormous emissions of the steel and concrete that wood replaces. Importantly, NEFF treats these as one system that also protects unharvested ecological reserves alongside working forests, and the approach has attracted major backing, including support through the USDA's landmark billion-dollar Climate-Smart Commodities program. It is a rare climate strategy that is both scientifically grounded and ready to deploy today.
Conservation on the ground: protecting the land itself
Science and strategy only matter if the forests themselves are protected, and this is where NEFF's hands-on conservation work comes in. The foundation directly owns and manages 150 Community Forests totaling 38,000 acres — lands that are kept open and free for the public to visit and enjoy every day, for hiking, skiing, hunting, and simply being in the woods. Beyond the land it owns outright, NEFF protects far larger working forests through conservation easements, including landscape-scale efforts like the Downeast Lakes and Pingree Forest Partnerships in Maine, and it continues to secure landmark deals, such as a recent agreement to help permanently protect hundreds of acres of rare, ancient forest in northern Maine.
This on-the-ground protection is the foundation of the whole climate strategy, because a forest can only store carbon if it remains a forest. It's also part of a broader movement to safeguard all of our natural and working lands from being lost to development. While agricultural conservation is the parallel effort focused on protecting the region's farmland and soils, NEFF's mission and expertise center squarely on the forest side of that landscape — keeping New England's woods as woods, unfragmented and intact, for both the climate and the wildlife and communities that depend on them.
How you can be part of it
The scale of this work means it can only succeed as a shared endeavor, and there are many meaningful ways for people across the region to take part. The simplest is to get outside and enjoy it: NEFF's Community Forests are open and free, and exploring them is a direct way to connect with the landscape the foundation is working to protect. Landowners have an especially powerful role to play, whether by permanently conserving their own land or by enrolling in NEFF's climate-smart forestry incentive programs, several of which can reimburse much or all of a participant's costs for improving their woods.
For those who want to support the mission directly, NEFF offers everything from one-time and monthly gifts to legacy giving and innovative conservation-finance options like the Pooled Timber Income Fund. And there is real reassurance in giving to an organization of NEFF's standing: it holds national Land Trust Accreditation, a Candid Platinum Transparency seal, and strong Charity Navigator ratings, reflecting a deep commitment to accountability. For anyone in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and across the Northeast who cares about the future of the region's forests, there is a way to help.