Investing in Nature

These remarks were delivered at Erb Returns and re-printed as part of Erb’s 30th Anniversary series, celebrating three decades of impact at the intersection of business and sustainability.

It was a glorious sunny day in September 2024. I was hiking along the John Day River in Oregon with my family and friends. I should have been happy and relaxed. Yet I was distraught. I was on the phone, making the mistake of taking a work call while on vacation. A deal, which I had spent over a year putting together, was falling apart.

We were trying to wrestle 68,000 acres of prime commercial forestland from one of the largest timberland owners in the country. Our offer had been accepted—we had the tiger by the tail—but we had only four weeks to put a $200 million transaction together or the seller would walk. As our lead investor on the phone listed off the reasons that they wouldn’t be able to participate in the transaction, I started to think through the ramifications.

Less than a year earlier, my partners and I had bought out the nonprofit owner of EFM, the company I had worked at for 15 years, creating one of the first women-owned timberland investment companies in the world. We had burned through our cash putting this deal together. It felt as though we had been left at the altar just as the band started playing "Here Comes the Bride."

EFM was created as a for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit Ecotrust in 2004. The nonprofit had painstakingly mapped the "Rainforests of Home” —a precious swath of coastal, temperate rainforest extending from British Columbia to Northern California. This region was shaped by rainfall, mild temperatures, and some of the most productive soils in the world. The timber industry had taken notice. In a little under two centuries, the conversion of these natural forests into timber plantations was nearly complete. The consequences became clear in hindsight: The marbled murrelet is on the endangered species list. The cost of treating drinking water had risen. Native language and cultural identities are disappearing.

We had been led to believe that to be productive, forests had to be managed, that wilderness had to be tamed, and that harvesting trees was the only way to fuel a growing economy. At EFM, we wondered if there was another way.

How could we reverse the tide? Could we learn to use silvicultural tools and the principles of ecological forest management to convert a tree plantation back into a viable, functioning forest? Did we have to choose between biodiversity and homes built with timber? We wondered if it was really possible to harvest less in the short term, or harvest differently, so that you could rebuild stocks and ultimately have more timber in the long run. And could it be done as a commercially viable, financially attractive investment, instead of yet another, small nonprofit endeavor?

A 35-year forest yields one pulp log and one saw log per tree. A 70-year forest can yield two saw logs—from the same acres. In 2011, just as I was graduating from Erb, the word "impact investing" officially entered the finance lexicon—and I had the good fortune of meeting my now business partner and co-founder of EFM at an impact investing conference. We saw the opportunity to pitch our idea to a new generation of investors who believed in the power of and. We found that we didn’t have to choose between having an impact and making financial returns.

The first fund I raised, in 2013, garnered $50 million from more than 60 investors. It took almost three years. It was painstaking. We’ve since raised over $600 million in the last 15 years, and made 25 investments across the West Coast. We grew our team to 12 talented, interdisciplinary professionals. We implemented ecological forestry and climate-smart forestry practices, developed some of the first forest carbon projects in the country and made plenty of mistakes.

Today, the first fund we raised is in its final year. We are on track to achieving our financial targets. And more importantly, our assets will be adding to the boundaries of national forests and state parks, growing community-owned forests, and creating Tribal reservations—all while storing 20 million tons of carbon, catalyzing $25 million for restoration, and protecting 1,500 miles of streams.  

The road has been bumpy. There were many times I thought we wouldn't make payroll. I’ve been frightened out of my wits by unfounded lawsuits. I've been rejected by countless investors: first for being too small, too niche, too green, too female; for needing too much subsidy; for getting too much in subsidies; for being owned by a non-profit. And I've watched too many deals fall apart. 

Speaking of which—let's come back to that deal. Sixty-eight thousand acres of prime coastal forestland, in Washington, surrounded by the Olympic National Park. The five watersheds it encompassed had been identified by scientists as the last and best hope for the recovery of endangered salmon in the lower 48. The property could connect the national park to the ocean and create a migration corridor for wildlife. We had arranged to buy it, and had built a plan to transition it—letting the forest grow for the first time in 80 years to past 50 years of age. This is the age where it can produce valuable ecosystem services alongside timber. It was the and that we had been striving to demonstrate for two decades. We just needed an alternative source of revenue to bridge the 20 years of lower timber income. And we needed $200 million from a new investor to replace the one that dropped out. Vacation was over.

It took us longer than we expected, but in the end, we received two long-term commitments from Meta and MSFT for the purchase of a million carbon credits from the property. This was the bridge revenue we needed, and it unlocked the $200 million in debt and equity we needed. Just like that, we had raised more money in twelve months than we had in a decade. Just as PPAs unlocked capital for cash-strapped renewable energy developers two decades ago, long-term carbon offtakes have the potential to change the face of forestry.

I want to acknowledge that 2026 is a little different from 2024. The world has changed. It's a little darker. Capital for climate-positive strategies, including ours, is hard to come by.  

We've all been there. When you've made your best case, but the sustainability agenda gets cut from the budget, when your team gets down-sized, when doubt creeps in. When you feel like nobody gets it.

What keeps you walking down that aisle?

Knowing what fuels your and is the key to perseverance. The tangible, enduring nature of forests is my fuel. Their legacy will give hope and joy to the generations of people who take the time to hike, camp and fish. The trees will continue to suck carbon out of the atmosphere for generations. And the wood from these forests; it will continue to support the rural economies that have co-existed with these forests for generations.

In November 2015, Billy Frank Jr., the Nisqually environmental leader, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. And so, I’d like to leave with the words of Billy Frank Jr.: "You have to give your life to what I’m talking about. You can’t be here today and gone tomorrow. You have to tell this story of change, continually.”

 I hope that each of you will continue to persevere, to take risks, and to find the and to replace the or in your lives.