Solutions journalism is news about how communities and organizations are responding to social and environmental problems. This collection contains solutions stories that detail ways that people around the world are trying to stop deforestation and promote restoration of temperate forests. In New Mexico, they are turning to traditional land management practices, like selective logging, in order to mitigate the chances of destructive fires. Similarly, Californians are using controlled burns to protect their forests from wildfires. Another story provides an out of the box solution of moving trees and ecosystems as climates everywhere stray from what they have been for centuries. Maine is using its vast forests to incentivize people to reduce their carbon footprint and a DNA database that was created to track trees will make it easier to catch and ultimately stop illegal logging.

Find more stories like these in the Solutions Journalism Network's Story Tracker.

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Temperate forests lie mostly in the Northern Hemisphere and in total cover 1.9 billion acres, making them a valuable opponent to climate change. These types of forests are resilient, but 99 percent of temperate forests have been altered over the last century either disrupted by development, turned into farm land, or cut down for timber. As the climate gets hotter and we continue our unsustainable land management, these forests become more susceptible to massive fires and insect outbreaks that are getting worse each year. Project Drawdown projects we can restore 235 million acres of forest by 2050, resulting in over 22.6 gigatons of reduced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, making temperate forest restoration an important solution for combating climate change.

Join the Earth Month Ecochallenge to learn more and take action on this climate solution.