US reforestation company Mast Reforestation has sold all carbon removal credits from its first biomass burial project in southern Montana less than six weeks after issuance, with Bain & Company and BMO joining a group of corporate buyers including Royal Bank of Canada and CNaught.
The 4,277 credits from the MT1 project were issued in January 2026 under the Puro.earth registry, representing the largest issuance to date under Puro.earth's Terrestrial Storage of Biomass (TSB) methodology. The project took nine months from construction start to credit issuance: among the fastest development timelines globally for a carbon removal project.
MT1 involved burying more than ten million pounds of trees killed in the 2021 Poverty Flats wildfire in an engineered underground chamber designed for long-term carbon storage.
The biomass would otherwise have been pile-burned, immediately returning stored carbon to the atmosphere. Credits carry a 100-year durability certification, and the project recently received an A rating from carbon ratings agency BeZero Carbon, which is a threshold achieved by fewer than 8% of non-nature-based carbon removal projects.
Bain & Company chief sustainability officer Sam Israelit said MT1 stood out for combining durable carbon removal with post-wildfire recovery. 'Biomass burial can deliver both environmental integrity and benefits to communities and ecosystems,' he said, adding that strong voluntary carbon markets would play a critical role in scaling credible carbon removal.
BMO chief sustainability officer Michael Torrance said the project demonstrated how high-integrity carbon removal could support recovery in wildfire-affected regions, in line with the bank's climate ambition to be a lead partner to clients on energy and climate resilience.
Proceeds from credit sales are now funding reforestation at the Montana site, where planting of more than 6,000 native conifer seedlings began on 15 April. The 2021 fire burned so severely that natural regeneration was considered unlikely within the next century without intervention. Seedlings have been grown from locally adapted wild-collected seed at Mast's Silvaseed Company nursery in Roy, Washington.
Grant Canary, chief executive of Mast Reforestation, said the sell-out validated biomass burial as a pathway for financing wildfire recovery. 'This is how durable carbon removal becomes investable infrastructure: predictable delivery, rigorous monitoring, and a direct funding source for ecosystem recovery,' he said.
Mast has identified more than 6.5 million tonnes of burned biomass in Montana alone as potentially eligible for future burial projects, and is targeting a second project for credit issuance in 2027. The company aims to reach 150,000 tonnes of annual deployment by 2030.
Mast Reforestation sells out Montana biomass burial credits within six weeks
