[russdpale]

I've read the website a few times, and I am having trouble understanding how this helps a forest?

I am sure I am missing something simple here: You have replaced mining with pine cone collection. Ok, that sounds kind of neat in a few differing ways. What happens to the pinecones that are mailed in? How is this helping a forest?

[pinecoin]

The idea is that once cones are collected, packaged, and tokenized, they will be put up for sale by the tree's owners (or those given permission to collect on their land—anyone collecting forest products without permission in Maine already faces a fine of up to $500).

The hope is that this will enable property owners (residential, schools, camp grounds, corporate campuses, municipalities, land trusts, commercial forests, etc.) to monetize their trees without needing to cut them down or remove much biomass.

Since Maine is over 90% forested, the equation is different here than many other places. We collected our Initial Cone Offering from a tree next to our house, in a mixed-use zone of a city. It's less about helping forests per se, more about creating an incentive to plant and maintain trees beyond just aesthetics and lumber.

We're not quite at the point of selling our tokenized cones, and have yet to provide any free tokens to others who have collected verifiable cones. We hope to have updates on those fronts soon. Thanks for checking it out!