Montana Buries Wildfire Trees, Funds Forest Regrowth

A Montana forest destroyed by wildfire in 2021 is getting a second chance at life, funded by burying its own dead trees underground.

Mast Reforestation sold out all 4,277 carbon removal credits from its first biomass burial project in less than six weeks. Major buyers included the Royal Bank of Canada, Bain & Company, and BMO, who together purchased credits representing more than 10 million pounds of trees killed in the Poverty Flats wildfire.

Instead of burning those dead trees in piles and releasing their stored carbon back into the atmosphere, Mast buried them in an engineered underground chamber in southern Montana. The buried biomass will stay locked away for at least 100 years, earning the project an A rating from carbon ratings agency BeZero Carbon, a threshold fewer than 8% of similar projects achieve.

Here's where it gets really exciting. The money from those credit sales is now funding actual forest recovery on the same land.

On April 15, crews began planting more than 6,000 native conifer seedlings grown from locally adapted wild seeds. The 2021 fire burned so intensely that scientists said the forest likely wouldn't regenerate naturally for at least a century without help.

The timeline matters too. Mast went from breaking ground to issuing verified carbon credits in just nine months, making this one of the fastest carbon removal projects globally.

The Ripple Effect

This model could transform how America responds to worsening wildfire seasons. Mast has already identified more than 6.5 million tons of burned biomass in Montana alone that could be eligible for similar projects.

Sam Israelit, chief sustainability officer at Bain & Company, said biomass burial delivers both environmental integrity and real benefits to communities and ecosystems recovering from disaster. Michael Torrance from BMO added that high-integrity carbon removal can directly support wildfire-affected regions while advancing climate goals.

Mast is targeting a second project for 2027 and aims to bury 150,000 tons of biomass annually by 2030. That's potentially hundreds of millions of pounds of dead trees turned into forest funding instead of smoke.

Grant Canary, Mast's chief executive, called the rapid sellout proof that durable carbon removal can become investable infrastructure when it delivers predictable results and rigorous monitoring.

Forests that seemed lost forever are getting replanted with their own recovery funds built in.