 |
|
 |
| ||
|
Pretty Maps or Critical Conservation?
A recent report says that while California leads the nation in its diversity of wildlife, it is second only to Hawaii in the percentage of its species that are at risk (see The Nature Conservancy under Now in Print). Add to that the fact that the state is home to eight of the most endangered ecosystems in the country, and you have a recipe for further loss of biodiversity. These scary statistics have resource managers scratching their heads, pondering the best way to conserve what remains of our natural landscapes and open spaces. How do you decide between saving a mudflat, a pristine oak woodland or an acre of straw stubble in the Delta if you've only got a few T-bills in your pocket?
Now in its third year, and with new money for conservation in the pipeline thanks to Propositions 12 and 40, the Resources Agency's Legacy Project, formerly known as CCRISP (California's Continuing Resource Investment Strategy Project), is developing a strategy and system for evaluating which parcels of land or which conservation projects will give the public the best buy for its dollar. Says the Agency's Rainer Hoenicke, "There's never been a coherent way before of asking the question, where should we invest our money? Individual agencies have always done this on their own, but nobody, before Legacy, has ever put together a statewide strategic plan for allocation of public funds for open space restoration and stewardship."
Legacy will give every kind of entity, from a local park district to a mountain conservancy to a big state agency like Cal Fish & Game, the tools to determine which areas should be bought or conserved, says Hoenicke. Primary tools, still works in progress, will be a digital atlas reflecting priority areas for conservation and other natural resource and land use information, bioregional workshops to gain local input, and a report-style assessment of the health and condition of the state's resources. Legacy is also looking into incentives for private landowners to manage their land in a more environmentally beneficial way.
"We don't want to preempt local land use decisions, we want to give them useful tools for making better decisions," says Hoenicke.
"Whether it's Legacy or something else, this is the future of conservation in California and nationally," says Mark Beyeler of the Coastal Conservancy, one of the many state agencies that may one day be expected to consider Legacy in its land acquisition and protection choices. "It's not a rearview mirror issue. It's an attempt to get performance and results, the most bang for the conservation buck."
"The utility of a better database-with an analysis of priority areas in California-is pretty much beyond question," says Steve Johnson with the Resources Law Group, a Legacy consultant.
The new California Digital Conservation Atlas, a k a "CONDOR," will be web-based and easily accessible, and will contain many data layers, among them priority areas identified by a host of different conservation plans from across the state. Atlas users will be able to find out everything from how many of the state's water bodies are impaired to where habitat links are needed for wildlife (such as those compiled by the California Wilderness Coalition for last year's Missing Linkages conference), and where to focus protection of "critical habitat" for endangered species.
But whether the Atlas will facilitate actual on-the-ground, substantive habitat protection remains to be seen. "I guess strategy-wise it's a good idea to have in one place all of the information about priority areas, and areas to conserve," says Jeff Miller with the Center for Biological Diversity. "But I'm pretty skeptical right now about the state's commitment to preserving endangered species. Why spend all of this money to print pretty maps if they're not really going to translate into conservation?" Miller also says that while incentives for private landowners to conserve sound like a good idea, they have "failed spectacularly" in California in terms of preserving endangered birds, frogs, rabbits, mice, snakes and the like.
Several of the resource managers ESTUARY interviewed also had mixed feelings about Legacy, viewing it as a necessary evil but refusing to speak on the record for fear of jeopardizing possible future state support for their programs. Some wonder whether the $12 million allocated to the project over six years wouldn't be better spent acquiring at least a little of the land being prioritized for protection-and whether there will be any Prop 12 or 40 money left by the time the Atlas is finally finished. But Legacy's Heather Barnett points out that in a state this big with so many conservation needs, $12 million is just pocket change and that the project is leveraging many of those dollars by developing data that will bring in bigger bucks.
Other resource managers were critical of the "top-down" planning approach Legacy seemed to be taking until recently, an approach that may be changing as a result of feedback from Legacy's many advisory committees. Members of these committees have also voiced concerns that conserving urban open space and farmland must be considered in addition to preserving hotspots of biodiversity. "California is a very big place, and one size does not fit all," says Beyeler, who sits on one of the committees. "We need a quilt or mosaic that takes regional priorities and stitches them into a statewide plan."
Is Legacy reinventing the wheel? Many states have implemented conservation plans, some more successfully than others, according to Barnett. In Oregon, the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife took the lead on the Oregon Biodiversity Project. After years of trying to get Oregon Fish and Wildlife to come up with a habitat conservation strategy for the state, says Defenders' Sarah Vickerman, the group just decided to do it itself, starting in 1994 and publishing its results in a book and CD in 1995. A coalition of 30 different groups, from ag to enviros, now acts as an implementation arm for the project and recently helped pass legislation to approve conservation incentives for private landowners.
Will this ever happen in California? "It's hard to get there from here," admits Vickerman, but she offers these words of advice. "Talk to everyone who has some sort of plan, then map it all. Fold in everything that's already been done. That way you can look at what's been done, what's underway and what's missing." The do-it-yourself method is a doubleedged sword, she says. "If it's done by the private sector, it doesn't scare people as much. On the other hand, it's not official policy either."
Defenders is hoping Oregon will adopt the group's plan; the state parks department has made a resolution to consider it, according to Vickerman, and even the Board of Forestry now agrees that the state needs a conservation plan (Oregon does not have the equivalent of California's Resources Agency).
John Woodbury, head of the Bay Area Open Space Council, says California had two choices for developing a statewide plan, either to add all the local plans together and figure out how to marshal the state's resources behind them, or to decide that some things must be figured out at the state level and some left to the locals. Legacy began with the latter choice, with a worthy "landscape-level" approach to conservation planning grounded in science. But when it broadened its scope from large habitat areas to urban parks and valley farm fields, things got more complicated and political.
"Developing good science, data and maps about habitat needs makes sense, but moving on to developing statewide priorities is becoming a process of apples and oranges," Woodbury says. "The only way you can decide on the value of a stretch of Coyote Creek in urban San Jose over thousands of acres of wildlands in the Hamilton Range is by values. You can't number and rank values, it's ultimately a political judgment."
Beyeler hopes Legacy will move more toward the comprehensive, bottom-up approach Vickerman recommends. "If the state were to embrace the groundwork provided by the past 30 years of organizing and stewardship by local community groups--what a great marriage and vision that would be. It will be a tragic mistake if Sacramento officials don't take that local history and activism and make it part of their plan. Community nonprofits are our implementation partners. Without them, we will never protect or steward these areas. People will care for the land they care about."
To hear from a wide range of stakeholders around the state, and to try to begin to plan more from the "bottom up," Legacy held the first of nine planned regional workshops this May on the Central Coast. The workshop was designed as a forum for people at the local and regional levels to voice their opinions about what is special about their areas, says Barnett.
At the workshop, 90 people--including the county ag commissioner, farmers and representatives from local land trusts, environmental and business groups--were divided into small groups to discuss the specifics of Legacy's proposed criteria for conserving terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, working and agricultural landscapes, urban open space and rural recreational areas. The criteria for each type of landscape differed, and included such considerations as soil and water quality for agricultural areas; connectivity and floodplain integrity for aquatic habitats; connectivity and quality of habitat for terrestrial areas; linkages between open spaces, scenic values or coastal access for urban landscapes; and positive economic impacts for rural recreation areas (to name just a few). Participants then weighted the various criteria. The information generated in the first workshop--as well as in future workshops (see calendar)--will be used to help decide which data layers to include in the conservation Atlas.
In the meantime, no one imagines that the Resources Agency is going to start ordering local agencies to "follow our Legacy model," or that the current governor is going to come out as a strong leader on the conservation land use front or that the state legislature will want to give up any of its district-focused turf. At a very minimum, Legacy may be tackling decades of poor coordination on statewide conservation planning, and laboring along as opportunist agencies and groups try to get all their own issues and values included in the mix.
"It's an ambitious project to be lauded for trying," says Woodbury. "I hope that at the end of the day we'll think the money has been well spent."
Contact: Rainer Hoenicke or Heather Barnett (916)653-5656, Sarah Vickerman (503)697-3222 or Marc Beyeler (510)286-4172 LOV
[ ABAG HOME | SFEP HOME ]
Copyright © 2002, San Francisco Estuary Project