Berea College has decided, as part of being stewards to the land, to take on a forest carbon initiative. Trees are imperative in sequestering carbon. When trees are cut down, all of the carbon they were storing gets released into the atmosphere, having negative effects. Therefore, the College’s initiative includes selling carbon credits to various companies that emit certain levels of carbon into the atmosphere. Using this money, Berea College has committed to managing the Forest in a way that will help it last for future generations and is in line with our past and current forestry practices. This funding will support forestry operations, thereby supporting the Forest itself. The Berea College Board of Trustees put this into action with the guidelines that mining or oil and natural gas exploration is prohibited in the Forest.
Learn more about carbon credits by reading here.
Berea College strives to use sustainable methods in all of its practices. One such case is through mule and horse logging. Currently, the Berea College Forestry department is learning some of the methods of
horse logging. Horse logging, essentially, is the use of horse teams to pull logs from the Forest that have
been cut. In this way, foresters are able to reach smaller places than they would be able to
with machines and trucks. This also eliminates the negative effects that machinery has on the envrionment. The use of horses to log provides many benefits. To learn more about horse logging at Berea College and some of the many benefits, please click to read
Team Work: Berea College Looks Back & Sees the Future written by Forestry Outreach Center Director, Wendy Z. Warren.
