Sustainability

Shaping the Future of Trails in the Santa Cruz Mountains 
Shaping the Future of Trails in the Santa Cruz Mountains – POSTDownload

This article published at this link and dated 8/28/25, two years after the referenced survey was implemented. Here’s a copy of the survey.

You can also watch this video recording of a presentation about the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network’s State of the Trails Report. Note, Zionne Fox’s article above, and her presentation here, overlook the very real issues of user conflicts in natural areas. The video, unlike the article above, does mention the need to understand environmental constraints.

Living by Principles

What comes to mind when you hear someone say something like, “She is a principled person?” If you trust the source of the statement, perhaps you will think more highly of the person being referenced, which is curious because you don’t have any idea of the nature of her principles. Perhaps merely having principles and acting upon them makes you more predictable, and that predictability is an asset. It seems that this might be a good time to reflect on principle-based living.

Social Principles

I posit that most religions are based on social principles of great value. Kindness, fairness, gratitude, generosity, and attentiveness are some such principles, stated positively. Some principles are stated in the negative such as “evil” including murder, greed, vengeance, gluttony, etc. It is a mystery to me that discussion of such principles is not the primary driver of political discourse. Perhaps we get confused when juxtaposing wealth redistribution as both generous (to the poor) and greedy (against the rich)? Or, maybe we wonder if it might or might not be kind to murder someone for heinous crimes? These are heady questions.

On a national level, we might feel ready to label presidents, members of the house and senate, or even Supreme Court officials as ‘principled’ or ‘unprincipled,’ but how would we take such labels to more definition? What precise principles would you suggest your favorite national politician has had or has lacked? So much media hype focuses on either fallabilities or exhilarating roaring successes of our so-called ‘leaders,’ and yet that question may be difficult to answer. I challenge you to try.

I suggest that everyone has some familiarity with social principles and that most people, if asked, would be able to speak to their personal framework. However, beyond that, I wonder how much people are guided by principles for their work, their homes, or their relationship with the environment. 

While I challenge everyone to think about what principles they operate on at the workplace or in their homes, I am more interested here in elaborating on some environmental principles that you might consider.

Ecological Principles  

There are principles that could guide humans in better forming their relationship with the environment, creating increased benefit for future generations. The root of all evil is said to be greed, and what better test of an environmental principle than just that – greed? 

One of the key attributes of greed is to seek only to take, without giving. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples understood that humans should be very mindful about what they took from nature, and also they should give back. Frugality is a central principle for humans’ relationship with the environment. The less stuff we buy, the more pro-environmental we are. Last I checked, it cost a liter of crude oil every time a dollar was exchanged. 

Giving Back to Nature

What is ‘giving back’ to nature? An indigenous person asked our community once why we were burning our prairies without seeding after the fire. Perhaps that is one way of giving back. We still aren’t doing that. Another way to give back would be to control the invasive plants and animals that are so terribly affecting nature. Please write to me if you can think of any other ways that Monterey Bay residents might give back to nature.

Energy Expenditure Principle

The way we create energy makes a difference and serves as a ripe area for environmental principle formation. Is the principle to create the most energy from the least impactful source? If so, how are we getting reports on how we might help?

The havoc being wrought by climate change has convinced many to be more mindful about what we take from nature, but most people have a very shallow understanding about that. Burning fewer fossil fuels is a Big Problem for life on Earth, but I hear very little about the impacts of alternate energy solutions on nature. Nuclear energy has a great environmental impact not normally described, same with solar panel production and concrete/steel installations for the bases of wind turbines. We might all benefit from getting more information about trade offs for various types of energy production. That way, we can shape our political or consumer voices to help create the best solutions. Plus, what are we hearing about using less energy, altogether? Long gone are the energy saving public service announcements of the now-lauded Jimmy Carter years.

Species Conservation Principle

Fossil-fuel burning-caused climate change is the number one threat to the environment, but there are other threats, and the core concern I believe we should have is about species conservation. I suggest that we should weigh human decisions on how well we can guarantee that all species continue to thrive. I have yet to speak with anyone that discounts this principle’s importance, but I have also seen many decisions made with too little information to adequately assess this principle. How is a regular person to evaluate whether or not a decision favorably affects species conservation? Luckily, we have public disclosure laws and people considering impacting the environment are required to analyze and disclose impacts on species. So, one would expect things like disclosure of species that might be impacted and how the impacts would affect their future chances of survival under the varied alternatives project proponents are required to analyze. If you don’t see such analysis, you should be careful about supporting such proposals.

For further thought on this, consider author Gregory David Roberts’ assertion in the novel Shantaram of the principle of complexity conservation. He would say that we should weigh the good of an action on whether it creates more or less complexity in the future…more complexity is the goal.

Go ahead- try using these pro-environmental principles or come up with your own! Let me know how it goes.

This article originally posted at BrattonOnline– try it, it’s FREE! Plus, very smart people contribute important news there- please do check it out and keep checking back, for substantive, real news.

Surpassing Sustainability? Natural Areas Visitor Use in Northern Santa Cruz County

The Situation

Our community has done a relatively good job of preserving nature and building a tourist economy, but with no end in sight to development pressure and wild lands feeling the pinch we as a community have nature tourism sustainability issues it’s up to us to face and manage. In the current configuration around 20% of Santa Cruz County has been set aside as parks, most of that managed by State Parks but with many other locations falling under the purview of a patchwork of public and private managers. This extensive park system allows us to enjoy diverse and healthy wildlife populations, increased property values, recreational open space, and clean ground & surface water that can only flow from unpolluted drainages. The 8+ million tourists that visit Santa Cruz County each year are a substantial driver of the economy –bringing jobs and tax revenue to our community– and yet, each of the 3 realms of sustainability – social, economic, and environmental – are already facing unprecedented strain, with even greater challenges clearly identifiable in the very near future. There is an urgent need for action.

Socially, both parks users and parks neighbors are facing a crisis of expectations. Visitors do not find the amenities they expect of open space areas; instead they find few restrooms, no interpretation, degraded and dangerous trails, and parks in a humiliating state of neglect. As neighbors with a long-timer’s perspective our experience of the natural areas around us is quickly changing with jammed parking areas, increased motor vehicle traffic, more users of more types, and the inevitable trash, graffiti, emergency response, and noise issues becoming more frequent and more intense. Longtime residents, where able, increasingly adjust their lives to avoid interactions with crowded tourist weekends. Those who live adjacent to public open spaces are more frequently picking up trash and calling law enforcement or for emergency response assistance. The impacts on our community are random and incur real costs, all the while being totally preventable.

Economically, we don’t have a good understanding of costs and benefits of open space users on our local economy. Certainly, many businesses embrace maximizing tourism to improve their profits. But, the tax revenue that nature tourism brings doesn’t seem to be enough to maintain our vehicle access & amenities at parks and hasn’t increased either trash or restroom services. We grimly consider how many more tourism-related accidents our emergency services can accommodate before negatively impacting response time for residents. Parks budgets have not kept up with the increased demand for interpretation, enforcement, trail management, or stewardship activities; local tourist taxes have for the most part not been allocated to our community’s natural attractions, and parks entrance fees are vastly insufficient in the rare cases that they are collected at all.   

Ecologically, our area is rich with globally-significant treasures all of which are threatened by increased use. Our rich predator community — understood by biologists to be a key indicator of ecological health– is only holding its own because we have at times been careful to maintain areas with fewer human impacts. Mountain lions, badger, ringtail, bobcat, coyote, and fox all are important to the ecology of our natural areas and each species requires careful planning to ensure sufficient habitat and that human use of those habitats does not disrupt them. Increased visitation also threatens our rare and endangered birds, fish, and amphibians through poaching; introductions of weeds and disease; as well as mere regular behavioral disruption.

Solutions

How do we create a more sustainable future for natural areas visitation in Northern Santa Cruz County? First and foremost, there must be a more comprehensive natural areas visitation plan across the landscape. Such a plan would address all of the social, economic, and ecological issues raised above. Currently, there are 11 entities operating in various levels of natural areas management isolation. Each time one of those entities proposes a new public access plan, there would be benefit from a more holistic analysis and plan for regional visitor use sustainability.

In addition, and in the meanwhile, there are two other important elements to create a more sustainable public access program: scientific rigor and public accountability. Public access managers are not able to adapt their management to social, economic, or ecological thresholds without good data; without good data, much will be lost. And, without a means for the public to hold them accountable, public access managers will be unable to comply with their civic agreements. Both of these elements require advocates strong enough to allow public access managers to reduce use as necessary and until data exist to support any level of access. Public engagement in natural areas management will be fostered through regular public reporting including convening of community meetings where there is evidence of both the standing of and responsiveness to our community.