(The Climate Trust, 25.Nov.2024) — The Climate Trust, a carbon market nonprofit, finalized a $2mn investment alongside Inlandsis Fund, a carbon finance fund, in a pair of grassland conservation carbon projects that span nearly 38,000 acres in Southeast Montana. The investment provides critical funding to support ongoing ranch management activities, permanent rangeland protection, and soil carbon storage.
This project is the fifth grassland conservation investment by The Climate Trust and its first project with Inlandsis Fund. The projects are anticipated to perpetually store 450,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
This investment was used to help place perpetual, no-till conservation easements forever protecting the ranch’s soil carbon. This strategy is part of The Climate Trust’s new Grassland Conservation Carbon Program, which can be used alongside NRCS’s Agricultural Lands Easement program or standalone. By valuing the amount of carbon perpetually protected by the placement of a conservation easement, The Climate Trust is able to provide payment to ranchers for this climate mitigation tool and support generational ranching. Once the initial investment is recovered, ranchers earn additional revenue through future carbon credit sales.
Grasslands are the least protected ecosystem in the US. Since 2012, 32 million acres of rangeland in the Great Plains have been converted to other land uses like croplands, disrupting critical wildlife habitat and migration corridors, and changing land ownership away from multi-generational ranchers. This historic investment supports this family’s generational ranching legacy in Montana and ensures that critical working land habitat is protected.
The Climate Trust will continue investing in working lands as it scales its Grassland Conservation Carbon Program, especially as the threat of conversion increases in the Northern Great Plains.
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