Brinkman & Associates Reforestation Ltd Information

Forty years ago, Brinkman began as a sub-contractor, outsourced by the provincial government of B.C., and was dedicated exclusively to planting trees. Since that time, Brinkman has expanded its services to restore forests for climate benefits, ecosystem benefits, timber supply benefits and social benefits by delivering innovative ecosystem-based solutions for restoring and sustaining forests. Worldwide, Brinkman identifies, plans, establishes and manages projects on either a co-development or contract basis worldwide. The Brinkman Group of Companies (www.brinkmanforest.com) is privately owned, financially sound and has been in a reforestation leader in Canada for 40 years and internationally for 15 years. The Brinkman team co-developed local dynamic adaptive solutions to perturbations of bio-geological earth systems. Human well-being locally and globally depends on our ecosystems, and ecosystems are all adapted to some geo-climatic niche. Human disturbances of bio-geological earth systems seldom have simple solutions. They require the application of a practical expert team working collaboratively with local and community leaders to develop adaptive management solutions. In Canada, the main perturbation to our extensive natural forests has been harvesting, and over the past forty years Brinkman developed the techniques, tools, operational systems and policies on which the restoration of harvested disturbances is based. Brinkman’s 600 planters are some of the most unusual Canadians, determined, strong, fun-loving and adventurous, camping and working in remote areas across Canada, following the snow line and working to the highest standards in some of the most difficult conditions. The second most significant perturbation to Canadian ecosystems has been its permanent replacement with urban developments, transportation corridors, mining and agriculture land use. In response to this challenge, over the past two decades, the Brinkman Group has developed a strong team of professionals restoring thousands of hectares of terrestrial, riparian and marine ecosystem disturbances after urban developments, highway construction, in mining tailings and within agriculture land. In the last decade the Brinkman Group’s work with Canadian indigenous populations evolved into several regional forest management agreements, where Brinkman helped raise the financing and has been contracted to manage forest harvest tenures for local First Nations. Brinkman Forest’s professional forestry and technical team are working in North Western British Columbia out of the Terrace office. This team has developed into the largest operational forest management partnership on indigenous forest tenures in Canada, with co-managed forest areas in British Columbia covering over a million hectares. The main client is Coast Tsimshian Resources in NW British Columbia. Working with them, Brinkman Forest is also leading the regional modeling of future forest ecosystem conditions through the six IPCC climate scenarios. Against the modeled projected impact of climate change on regional resource values, it is working with the local communities to develop adaptive action response plans. The research team is also working with WWF to build a decision options analysis model to permit the integrated management of all ecosystem values in the region, with a special focus on water. In the tropics similar forces of development (agriculture and forestry) has driven deforestation and lead to soil erosion and land degradation. In 1995, to reverse this trend of degradation, the Brinkman Group established long term afforestation investment projects in Cost Rica which included biodiversity and community benefits. These projects developed into some of the highest value tropical hardwood reforestation programs in Central America. Its Brinkman y Associados Reforestadores Centro America (BARCA) teams now manage over $100 million in investment and have 350 local Costa Rican and Panamanian people, including a strong team of regional professional foresters, biologists, engineers and specialists working in several Central American countries. In 2006 the Brinkman Group designed one of the first afforestation of a park buffer zone through the Biocarbon Fund using the CDM afforestation program on the award winning Pico Bonito project in Honduras set up by Ecologic. The Brinkman Group who was chosen to design the REDD project and co-write the PDD using the WB Mosaic methodology and evolved into one of the strongest multi-disciplined carbon modeling teams in the world. Several projects they have developed incorporate both Afforestation/Reforestation/Restoration (ARR) with REDD, building on the high value tropical hardwood plantation models developed in the previous decade. Barca has also begun to develop a regional land use restoration and conservation co-management program for the 436,000 hectare indigenous protectorate of the Embera Wounaan, the Indigenous people of the Dar