OneCanopy's differentiator is in their ability to adapt to client needs
OneCanopy has sold 35,000 trees for 2023 planting so far. Their current clients include federal, state, and local government entities, nonprofits, tribal agencies, and private landowners. The plant material they’ve purchased will support wildlife habitats, river and wildfire restoration, soil conservation, and food sovereignty.
“One of our core tenets is truly partnering with our clients,” said Martinez. “We know their needs will vary greatly, from order size to species to timing. As a small company, we can be flexible and adapt our processes to meet their specific needs.”
Rocky Mountain region welcomes needed reforestation company, OneCanopy
OneCanopy is a privately funded conservation nursery in northern Colorado, growing native trees and shrubs for reforestation throughout the Rocky Mountains. The demand is enormous, and OneCanopy is there to help fill it.
Trees started in the nursery are able to get a jump on trees that might sprout from seed in the wild. In six or eight months, a nursery tree will be as tall as a 2- or 3-year-old tree in nature. That translates into an increased survival rate for greenhouse trees when planted in nature. While forest service trees typically have a 50% survival rate, trees from private greenhouses have upward of 75% survival rates.
Reforestation operation takes shape in Loveland greenhouse
Imagine, if you can, 350,000 tubes, each six to eight inches tall and an inch in diameter. Each is filled with a special mixture of fertilized soil and popping from the top is a ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, a narrow-leaf cottonwood or some other tree suitable for planting in Colorado.
Each of those tubes was seeded with exactly three seeds — by hand. If all three seeds sprouted, two would be removed, again by hand, to leave room for the strongest. Or perhaps the other two seedlings would be replanted and nurtured into viable plantings.
The result of this hand labor is an expanse of seedling trees that in the next year or two will find new homes in the landscape of Colorado, replacing trees lost to beetles or fire or, perhaps, in a local homeowners association looking to have more visual greenery.
The demand for trees suitable for reforesting the region’s mountainsides, high plateaus and prairies is enormous, and a new social enterprise company, OneCanopy, is there to help fill it.
OneCanopy is the brainchild of Kevin Brinkman, whose day job is as CEO of Brinkman Real Estate Services LLC. With an interest in the environment and seeing the need in Colorado for reforestation, he launched Brinkman Conservation LLC, hired a staff and began to plant trees under the trade name OneCanopy. The operation runs from a former hemp greenhouse at 2880 14th St. SE in Loveland. A company Brinkman created called KMB 525 LLC bought the greenhouse property for $2.1 million.
OneCanopy aims to address the entire reforestation process from seed to project monitoring
It all started with an article. In February 2021, researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the United States Forest Service explored the aggressive reforestation goals that have been proposed in response to climate change. Their study showed that 30 billion trees were needed by 2040, requiring nursery production in the US to more than double to meet this target.
Fort Collins native Kevin Brinkman has joined the effort to combat deforestation issues in the Rocky Mountain region by founding OneCanopy, Colorado’s first reforestation company.
The company is a privately funded social enterprise that aims to engage in various facets of the reforestation pipeline, beginning with a seedling nursery growing plants that are native to the Rocky Mountain region. Although the seedling nursery is the company’s first official foray in to the conservation space, their vision is to engage in every aspect of the reforestation pipeline. Over time, OneCanopy plans to add project financing and implementation, seed collection, out-planting, and post-project monitoring to their services.
Fort Collins developer launches company to help regrow forests after fires, beetle kill
Loveland’s OneCanopy is on a mission to grow trees and shrubs to reforest areas hit hard by wildfire, drought and beetle kill in Colorado and beyond.
Brinkman Real Estate’s CEO, Kevin Brinkman, has started a business to help reforest areas in the Rocky Mountain region hit hard by years of beetle kill, wildfires, and drought.
Brinkman started OneCanopy after reading an article about deforestation. A Nature Conservancy and U.S. Forest Service study estimated the U.S. needs 30 billion additional trees by 2040 to adequately address large-scale deforestation.
“I couldn’t believe the numbers coming out of that study,” said Brinkman, who is not giving up his day job. “It showed how important it is for private (businesses) to start investing in this effort for us to meet these goals.”
Click here to read the full article in The Coloradoan >>
Colorado entrepreneur launches region’s first reforestation company
OneCanopy is the first privately funded company in the Rocky Mountain region that’s aiming to address the entire reforestation process from seed to project monitoring.
Fort Collins, CO, March 22, 2023: The US is short more than 30 billion trees to adequately address largescale deforestation from climate change and human-induced disturbances. In Colorado alone, there’s more than three million acres of reforestation potential and the largest tree producers can only meet 20% of the need. Fort Collins native Kevin Brinkman has joined the effort to combat these issues by founding OneCanopy, Colorado’s first reforestation company. The company is a privately funded social enterprise that aims to engage in various facets of the reforestation pipeline, beginning with a seedling nursery growing plants that are native to the Rocky Mountain region.
It all started with an article. In February 2021, researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the United States Forest Service explored the aggressive reforestation goals that have been proposed in response to climate change. Their study showed that 30 billion trees were needed by 2040, requiring nursery production in the US to more than double to meet this target. The biggest needs as identified by their study were “additional investment to expand capacity for seed collection, seedling production, workforce development, and improvements in pre- and post-planting practices” (Fargione et al., 2021). This firmly cemented Kevin Brinkman’s passion for conservation and the Fort Collins-based entrepreneur decided it was time to put his money where his mouth is.
“I couldn’t believe the numbers coming out of that study,” Brinkman recalls. “It showed how important it is for private companies to start investing in this effort for us to meet these goals.”
After digging further, he learned there were fewer than 10 nurseries focused on native tree species production in the Rocky Mountain region, all of which are currently operating at full capacity.
“The impacts of climate change are palpable to us in Colorado,” said Brinkman. “The wildfires, the beetle kill, the droughts. That’s why we decided to start in our backyard, focusing on the Rocky Mountain region.”
Brinkman took the first step in January 2022 with the hire of Director of Operations Katelynn Martinez. Martinez is a graduate of Colorado State University’s Impact MBA program and has a decade of experience in forest health and management. Together, Brinkman and Martinez built up the rest of the team. Less than a year later, the company is a fully operating social enterprise with a triple-bottom-line mission. Profits are reinvested in the company as they work toward more than just seedling growth. The company also has social and community engagement goals focused on providing education, volunteer opportunities, nonprofit support, and skilled workforce training.
The team now consists of seven full-time employees with more than 40 years of industry experience. They’ve purchased and fully transitioned a nursery property off I-25 in Loveland and grown more than 300,000 seedlings. With community impact as a focus of the company, they’ve launched a volunteer and education program, through which 900 hours have already been logged.
The company has sold 35,000 trees for 2023 planting so far. OneCanopy’s current clients include federal, state, and local government entities, nonprofits, tribal agencies, and private landowners. The plant material they’ve purchased will support wildlife habitats, river and wildfire restoration, soil conservation, and food sovereignty.
“One of our core tenets is truly partnering with our clients,” said Martinez. “We know their needs will vary greatly, from order size to species to timing. As a small company, we can be flexible and adapt our processes to meet their specific needs.”
In the next five years, OneCanopy hopes to be the second largest producer of seedling trees for conservation efforts in the US by growing three million seedling trees per year, aiding in the reforestation of 10,000 forested acres throughout the Rocky Mountains. The production capacity of the current property is one million seedlings per year.
Although the seedling nursery is the company’s first official foray in to the conservation space, their vision is to engage in every aspect of the reforestation pipeline. Over time, OneCanopy plans to add project financing and implementation, seed collection, outplanting, and post-project monitoring to their services.
About OneCanopy
OneCanopy is a privately funded conservation nursery in northern Colorado growing native trees and shrubs for reforestation throughout the Rocky Mountains. We aim to be a premier partner and work directly with stakeholders throughout the entire conservation and reforestation pipeline, from seed collectors to nonprofits, from governments to schools. As a social enterprise, we reinvest our profit back into the nursery to grow between 500,000 and one million trees annually for reforestation.
For more information, visit www.one-canopy.com or follow us @plantonecanopy on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
References:
Fargione, J., Haase, D., Burney, O., Kildisheva, O., Edge, G., Cook-Patton, S., Chapman, T., Rempel, A., Hurteau, M., Davis, K., Dobrowski, S., Enebak, S., De La Torre, R., Bhuta, A., Cubbage, F., Kittler, B., Zhang, D. and Guldin, R. (2021). Challenges to the Reforestation Pipeline in the United States. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.629198
