Company Buries 10M Pounds of Dead Trees to Fight Climate

Mast Reforestation just proved that dead trees can help heal the planet.

The company sold its first batch of carbon credits after burying more than 10 million pounds of fire-killed trees from California wildfires. Instead of burning the debris and releasing carbon back into the atmosphere, Mast buried the biomass in permanent underground storage vaults while replanting new forests on the same scorched land.

Royal Bank of Canada, CNaught, and Muir AI became the first buyers of these burial credits through Puro.earth, a third-party verification standard. The purchases signal growing demand from financial and technology sectors for durable carbon removal solutions that can be measured and verified.

The project, called MT1, now holds thousands of tons of buried biomass in what Mast calls a high-durability storage solution. The company recently made headlines with an April Fools' story about a lost action camera in the burial vault, using humor to emphasize a serious point: what goes in isn't coming back out for a very long time.

Revenue from the carbon credits directly funds the reforestation work already underway. This creates a financial cycle where cleaning up wildfire damage pays for forest recovery, addressing a major bottleneck that has slowed large-scale restoration efforts across the West.

Mast handles the entire process from start to finish. Teams collect seeds, prepare burned land, manage fire-killed trees, grow seedlings, plant new forests, and arrange financing. This end-to-end approach means landowners and agencies get a single partner for the complex work of wildfire recovery.

The company recently highlighted field workers replanting on steep, charred terrain to showcase the demanding physical work behind each project. These skilled teams operate in harsh conditions that require both technical expertise and operational resilience.

The Ripple Effect

This model addresses multiple challenges at once. Wildfires leave behind dangerous fuel loads that increase future fire risk. Burning debris releases stored carbon and creates air pollution. Meanwhile, restoration projects struggle to find funding.

By turning waste management into carbon storage and using the revenue to fund new growth, Mast creates value from destruction. The approach could reshape how communities and agencies handle the millions of acres of burned forest across the American West.

As climate change intensifies wildfire seasons, solutions that clean up damage while removing carbon from the atmosphere become increasingly valuable. The MT1 project demonstrates that restoration can be both ecologically sound and economically viable.

One buried tree at a time, innovative companies are proving that yesterday's disaster can fund tomorrow's forest.