For Immediate Release
February 12, 2025
Colorado State Land Board Approves Landmark Reforestation Lease with Land Life
DENVER, CO — The Colorado State Board of Land Commissioners (State Land Board) approved an ecosystem services forest carbon lease with Land Life Company USA PBC (Land Life), marking a significant step toward reforesting wildfire-affected state trust lands. This innovative public-private partnership, and the first forest carbon production lease on state trust property, will restore up to 1,000 acres of land severely damaged by wildfires across Grand, Huerfano, and Larimer counties, enhancing long-term land stewardship and ecosystem resilience.
“This initiative represents an important component of one of our growing lines of business for the State Land Board, particularly in the voluntary carbon market,” said Nick Massie, Interim Director of the Colorado State Land Board. “By leveraging reforestation as an ecosystem service, we are not only restoring lands that are struggling to reforest naturally, but also ensuring they continue to generate revenue for our trust beneficiaries, primarily the public school children of Colorado.”
Land Life, a global leader in nature-based restoration, specializes in reforesting degraded landscapes. The company has planted over three million trees in North America to date, half of which have been planted on private land in Colorado burned by wildfires. This lease is the company’s first partnership with the public sector in North America.
“We are incredibly excited to be working with the State Land Board and see the approval of this lease as the first step in a broader opportunity to restore state land impacted by wildfires, which are unfortunately getting more frequent and severe,” said Rebekah Braswell, CEO at Land Life. Clara Rowe, Director of Strategic Partnerships went on to highlight: “This project is a clear example of how restoring nature is good for people and the planet. By building resilient ecosystems while channeling funding to public schools, we see this partnership as a double investment in the future of Colorado.”
The State Land Board initially identified nearly a dozen parcels for Land Life to evaluate through remote sensing and then field visits, analyzing 13 key topic areas including project size, burn severity, salvage, and the status of natural regeneration. After the evaluation process, Land Life identified five properties significantly impacted by the Spring Creek (2018), Silver Creek (2017), High Park (2012), and Cameron Peak (2020) wildfires as appropriate for reforestation.
Land Life will fund and implement this project, in consultation with the Colorado State Forest Service, planting native tree species to support biodiversity, improve watershed health, and support property-specific forest management plans over the coming decades.
This project also contributes to broader climate change mitigation efforts by sequestering carbon through healthy forest regeneration.
“Reforesting these areas is critical for future wildfire mitigation and landscape resilience, and will meaningfully contribute to Colorado’s carbon reduction goals,” said Mindy Gottsegen, Conservation Services Manager of the State Land Board. “Planting native trees is a long-term investment in the health and resiliency of these lands in the face of climate change. By restoring tree cover, we can reduce soil erosion, improve water retention, and create healthier forests that are more resistant to future fires.”
The State Land Board and Land Life view this first lease agreement as an exciting pilot program that could serve as a model for reforestation on other state trust properties in the future.
For more information please contact:
Emily Barbo, Colorado State Land Board, 720-854-3330, emily.barbo@state.co.us
Clara Rowe, Land Life, 603-986-7434, c.rowe@landlifecompany.com
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About the Colorado State Board of Land Commissioners:
The Colorado State Land Board is a constitutionally created agency that manages a $4.4 billion endowment of assets for the intergenerational benefit of Colorado’s K-12 schoolchildren and public institutions. The agency is the second-largest landowner in Colorado and generates revenue for beneficiaries by leasing three million surface acres and four million subsurface acres for agriculture, grazing, recreation, commercial real estate, rights-of-way, renewable energy, oil, gas, and solid minerals. The agency is entirely self-funded and receives no tax dollars.
About Land Life:
Land Life restores degraded land at scale to benefit climate, biodiversity, and communities. Their international team of dedicated scientists, entrepreneurs, ecologists, engineers, and operations specialists are on a mission to help restore the nearly five million acres of degraded land around the globe. Land Life currently funds the majority of their work through the voluntary carbon market and is at the forefront of building alternative markets for valuing nature.