The Great Reserve

Team member Bob, who is a director of The Great Reserve, has returned home to the US and has been visiting some Redwoods, proudly sporting some of our branded gear 😀. Bob has a special connection to our mission after his home in Sequoia Crest, along with many old growth Giant Sequoais, was destroyed by the uncommonly destructive wildfires that have been reported in the media in recent years.

Our mission is to plant and protect 100,000 Giant Sequoias (aka Redwoods) in the UK is to create a safe haven for these wonderful trees - capturing more CO2 than any other species and locking it up for anything up to 3500 years!

To support our cause you can buy and plant a Sequoia in your own name at our groves - and at the same time create a carbon neutral legacy as it grows and removes more C02 than the lifetime emissions of your average U.K. citizen.

Jill and Henry at the sustainability stall at the .wine festival in Olympia supporting our Sequoia Grove partner 🌲 🍷

Some 50 years ago, David Milarch, a tree farmer from Michigan, was used to seeing old growth forests being felled for timber, but the scale and thoroughness of this destruction across North America was not fully understood until later years. As it stands today David tells us that a staggering 98% of America’s old growth forests have been destroyed.

David and his the team propagate, archive and plant environmentally important trees – trees with the genetic strength to live the longest and grow the most successfully over time. The best examples of their species.

Their work is invaluable, no more so than in the case of Sequoias Giant Sequoias whose dwindling habitat and collapsing numbers has created a real sense of urgency, now includedin the IUCN Endangered Species Red List.

Using cuttings and seeds from the oldest and biggest trees, he and his team are growing new forests from a gene pool that has been the most robust and successful for thousands of years, therefore likely to have greater resilience to the fast paced impacts of climate change.

When The Great Reserve project was founded I reached out to David, and we discussed the issues facing Giant Sequoias and how we might find a way to help them find root in an alternative habitat where they might have the opportunity to thrive again. Many Sequoias were brought over to the UK by the Victorians in the 19th Century and have grown successfully on our shores, so creating new groves in the UK is a life raft opportunity for these climate refugees, an insurance policy against what harsh years may lie ahead in their native US habitat.

David and I worked up a plan together and Archangel shipped over 50 saplings that had been propagated from some of the largest Giant Sequoias still alive at that time: Stagg and Waterfall. Stagg miraculously survived the recent Castle fire. Unfortunately, Waterfall did not.

We can take some comfort that the precious genetics of both of these trees are now preserved on the Welsh hillsides in The Great Reserve groves near Brecon and Abergavenny.

Please note that at the time of publishing this article Google’s map is out by c.20m to the East.

The 2024 Planting Crew for The Great Reserve - what a week we are having checking up on trees planted across our Brecon and Abergavenny sites, as well as welcoming new Sequoia Patrons to come and plant their trees 🌲

The trees in the background are Coastal Redwoods from the Llanover Estate, 2m trunks and maybe 200ft tall! All right next to our site. Bodes well!
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Ready for the week’s planting ahead!

A stand of Coastal Redwoods and a stand of Giant Redwoods just a couple of milesfrom our planting site in Abergavenny🌲🌲🌲

Today we celebrate a new partnership with .co and their Sherwood monitoring service, a carbon measuring platform that uses LIDAR and photogrammetry to report on forest growth based on data yielded on a tree-by-tree basis.

When we first met Harry from we recognised immediately that their product was a great fit for us. Deeply engrained in our method and DNA is an ‘every tree counts’ philosophy, planting and protecting the endangered Giant Sequoia tree in the UK as a safe haven from the worst effects of climate change in their native US habitat.

Our supporters come and plant their Sequoias with their own hands and in their own names. We needed a partner who could accommodate this level of detail, particularly given we have committed to replace any Sequoia trees that fail to survive – a policy towards yield loss that to the best of our knowledge no other tree organisation can match.

There is significant value to both us and our carbon buyers in enabling us to track the survival, growth, and incremental carbon volume of all the trees in our groves. Each site visit and carbon report they produce verifies the additional carbon stored within our trees since their last assessment, providing hard data on growth performance.
We have never felt that we belong in the Verra or Gold Standard stable of ‘official carbon credits’. As a species protection program, working within their framework was not a suitable fit for us. Accurately capturing the data behind the actual growth of each Sequoia tree provides us with a tool that cuts through many of the issues surrounding carbon credits and the negative reputation they have garnered over the years.

We stand for something more than digitally traded and purchasable carbon credits. We make sure our self-planting UK-based project differentiates from carbon sold by projects in far-off lands where there is little to no buyer engagement, and where there is increasing scrutiny on their impact, quality, and local displacement issues. Working with Treeconomy as an independent party reporting on our carbon capture will help maintain our position as a high quality and ultra robust UK based tree planting project.

Giant Sequoias are even more beautiful in the snow!

What can be done when the verifiers aren't verifying effectively?
 
Anyone who is concerned with moving the world towards a sustainable future and reducing the worst effects of climate change will have been dismayed to learn about the very serious deficits in the integrity of VERRA certified credits exposed by the Guardian investigation last week.

VERRA certifies approximately 75% of all voluntary offsets of which about 40% are rainforest credits. These allow companies to offset their carbon emissions by protecting rainforest that would have otherwise been at risk from deforestation. The Guardian investigation found that 94% of these rainforest credits were based on outdated methodologies and do not reduce deforestation.

What can be done when the verifiers aren't verifying effectively? The onus will fall on the buyers of carbon, on the Heads of Sustainability within each business, who will need to assess each project not just from their desk but in the field.

Our relationship with carbon credits has been an interesting one. Our belief is that carbon accountability should be addressed domestically, not outsourced to the developing world. Digital tradeable carbon credits provided by projects in far off territories where land and labour are cheapest are completely removed from what we set out to achieve - to bring people into nature, roll their sleeves up and plant trees, to directly participate in their carbon journey.

As a project that is focused foremost on species protection, using carbon as a means to finance our project, we were never a good fit for the industry verification main players and have had to cut our own path.

Today we are holding our head high, embracing the low tech elements of our project verification methods that have set us apart from the industry standard . Our clients to come and plant their trees themselves (bulletproof verification!), and then provide GPS coordinates for every Sequoia planted. Thereafter Treeconomy's Sherwood platform uses drone technology for carbon reporting, integrating the latest technologies to track growth per tree.

Glad to have The Great Reserve Sequoia Project included in Willem Marx's Bloomberg article on UK tree planting. Let's protect and grow our native tree woodlands while separately creating a more land efficient and durable carbon strategy using Giant Sequoias, our planet's largest tree, fastest growing conifer, with a potential natural lifetime of up to 3500 years.
https://lnkd.in/e2KGw99Y

A fun page out of Sequoia Story children’s book.
Available at www.thegreatreserve.org

Our wonderful children’s book about the life of a 3000 year old Giant Sequoia. 25% discount code below. Gifting this book helps support The Great Reserve, planting and protecting 100,000 Giant Sequoias in the U.K., a safe haven from the climate change catastrophe that is seeing their numbers in their natural habitat (California) drop by 10% in 2021.
25% Discount Code: SS2522

Excalibur, Our founder Henry’s favourite planting tool - not available for rent or hire

A young Sequoia sapling about to join The Great Reserve as we go planting this weekend

‘The Opis Acre’ - 40 Giant Sequoia trees planted yesterday by the Opis team who travelled to our site in Abergavenny to create their own mini-grove. Not even a murmur about the wind and rain, they scaled the hillside with determination, rolled their sleeves up and got their hands dirty. Their 40 trees have become part of The Great Reserve - 100,000 Giant Sequoias planted here in the U.K. to help protect the future of the species, currently endangered in their native US habitat. These 40 trees will capture a whopping 5000 tonnes of CO2 over the next 150 years, and far more after that. We are thrilled to have them as one of our corporate supporters making use of our Sequoia Carbon Tonnes (SCTs) for their offset.

We are off to our Abergavenny grove again this weekend to plant more Sequoias with new patrons! Can’t wait - it’s due to be a wet one!

We are exited to announce our rebrand to The Great Reserve! We are hugely grateful to all those that have supported us as One Life One Tree, they are the foundation of what has become a mission to build The Great Reserve, 100,000 Giant Sequoias planted here is the U.K. to help protect the species. In their native US habitat they are losing as many as 10% of old growth Sequoias every year, and with only 75,000 remaining (2021) we have made it our goal to replicate their numbers here in the U.K., a proven safe haven for the species after the Victorians successfully brought them over as early as 1850. All the wonderful patrons that have supported us to date now have their trees as the first 1000 Sequoias that form the reserve. As we are now branching out to a more diverse supporter network including companies and charities, we needed to change our name to fit a broader base. We hope you like it!

Things only seem to be getting worse for our remaining old growth Sequoias. Our efforts to plant The Great Reserve of 100,000 here in the U.K. as a safe haven for the species is increasingly vital. We are setting up The Great Reserve Foundation to receive donations - or you can buy Sequoia Carbon Tonnes from us via a business or as an individual to help fund our Sequoia forest network.

A big thanks to Euronews Green and Maeve Campbell for reporting on our project with such an enjoyable and positive piece! https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/06/25/i-planted-a-giant-sequoia-tree-to-offset-the-carbon-footprint-of-my-whole-life

I planted one tree and offset the carbon footprint of my entire life This innovative scheme in the UK aims to establish giant sequoia trees outside of their natural habitat.

Great to see our Sequoias providing a home to some other species in the UK

Once you know what to look for, they are impossible to miss. With over 10,000 in the U.K. today the oldest of our Giant Sequoias planted by the Victorians rise above many skylines. Keep an eye out, there will be some near you!

Wonderful to be featured in The Guardian Saturday Magazine in an article on U.K. tree planting strategies by - a great read and thoughtful coverage on a big subject where so many are seeking advice on how to take action to help fight climate change!
Online article here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/15/beginners-guide-to-planting-trees-and-fighting-climate-crisis

A beginners’ guide to planting trees – and fighting the climate crisis We need 1.5bn trees in the UK to tackle the climate crisis. But planting them badly can be counterproductive – here are the do’s and don’ts