May 24, 2025

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Carbon offset - Green Diamond

The 2021 Bootleg Fire burned through thousands of acres of forest the Green Diamond timber company included in two major carbon offset projects.

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In this Google Earth image from July 2021, light-colored rectangles indicate slash piles left behind by decades of logging by previous land owners. When Green Diamond acquired the land, they burned many of the piles, but the remaining ones provided fuel for the Bootleg Fire.
Google Earth / OPB

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Green Diamond’s Justin Kostick drives through a section of woods in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, June 29, 2023, destroyed by the Bootleg Fire that swept through Southern Oregon in 2021.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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Green Diamond’s John Davis, left, and Justin Kostick look over dead trees on one of Green Diamond’s Klamath Basin properties, June 29, 2023. During the Bootleg Fire in 2021, Green Diamond lost live trees that stored some 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, part of two carbon offset projects covering some 570,000 acres.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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John Davis, vice president and general manager at Green Diamond, examines a tree killed on company land. The tree, while still alive, pulled carbon dioxide out of the air, which is stored in the wood.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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Davis looks over charred, dead remains of trees in the Klamath Basin. The majority of dead trees within the Green Diamond burn zone, which stretches across more than 100,000 acres, have been left on the land to provide shade and protection for the seedlings planted beneath them.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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Hazard trees that remained standing near roadways after the fire were removed. The project was carried out by Green Diamond, utilizing grant funding from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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Davis shows the scope of the 2021 Bootleg Fire and impact to Green Diamond properties, at the company’s Klamath Falls office, June 29, 2023. In the areas shaded in red, the fire killed more than 90% of the trees.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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The forest on this Green Diamond tract in the Klamath Basin, June 29, 2023, was thinned five years prior to the Bootleg Fire, and had a higher tree survival rate than in areas that were not thinned.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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Grasses, wildflowers and other ground vegetation have regrown, with a slash pile of dead trees in the background, June 29, 2023.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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A white fir seedling, planted on one of Green Diamond’s Klamath Basin properties. Starting in January 2022, the area was salvage logged, and then replanted with lodgepole pine, ponderosa pine and white fir in the spring of 2023.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

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