Climate ChangeWith a near consensus of the independent scientific community that climate change, among many other deteriorating environmental vital signs, is putting humanity in peril, scientists are urging swift and decisive action to steer clear of calamity(for instance, see this letter written and signed by 20,000 of the most prestigious world scientists [and counting] in late 2017 and early 2018). We, as caretakers of a single ecological community, feel a deep responsibility to help set a positive example of stewardship that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions, and, even, if possible, sequesters them when one considers the carbon mitigating effects of the kind of healthy forest we work to maintain.
By far, the most important function we, or any trail system, can serve in terms of climate change is as a built in excuse to keep large tracts of diverse forest and the life that supports it thriving. Worldwide, “Trees are dying at the fastest rates ever seen” even as they play a critical role in sequestering CO2. Despite their rapidly dwindling numbers “trees suck more than a hundred billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere” each year.
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