John Christensen reviews a map of his forest in Corbett, Oregon, near the Columbia River on July 17, 2024. (Rian Dundon/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
A small statue of St. Francis sits on a stump holding court in Julie and John Christensen’s forest in Corbett.
The patron saint of animals and ecology is at home among the couple’s 70-acres of Douglas firs, cedars and hemlocks near the Columbia River. The Christensens moved to Corbett, a small, unincorporated town 30 miles outside of Portland, in 1984, intending to make it a communal home for themselves and friends they’d met through Julie’s work as a Catholic campus minister at Western Washington University. Much of the forest had been clear-cut for logging and for animal grazing before they moved in, so they set out planting over 5,000 trees in their first few years on the land, and many more over the next 40, making it a sanctuary to the bears, cougars and deer navigating a broader landscape taxed by growing logging and development.
Hoping to preserve their reforestation efforts, they signed a contract in 2023 with the company Forest Carbon Works that binds the future of their forest to a voluntary carbon crediting market. The contract ensures their forest, regardless of ownership, is managed for 125 years primarily for conservation so it can capture and store as much carbon dioxide as possible, generating credits that can be sold to polluting companies hoping to offset their own pollution.