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Of the many background sounds emitted in the forest -- birds tweeting, creeks gurgling, trees whispering -- one of them isn't ka-ching. But that could change any year now.

Oregon's Willamette National Forest ranks No. 1 in the nation in its quantum storage of carbon dioxide. And it is but one of 10 Northwest forests -- in Oregon, Washington and southeast Alaska -- that lead all federal forests in the United States in locking away the greenhouse gas.

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After the B&B Complex fire in the Metolius River watershed in 2003, some researchers estimated that the fire released six times more carbon dioxide -- a global warming gas -- than all other energy and fossil fuel use that year in Oregon.

But the OSU researchers observed forest growth in the Metolius basin in Oregon's Cascade Range, concluding that far fewer trees were burned -- 1 percent to 3 percent versus earlier estimates of 30 percent.

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William Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society, a national group that seeks to preserve wildlands, called on Obama to set up a National Forest Trust, a series of federal reserves chosen on the basis of their carbon density, to store the substance that contributes to global warming when released.

… Meadows revealed his proposal Tuesday at a conference of the Frank Church Institute at Boise State University.