carrying capacity

What Do I Want for Wildlife?

We might ask ourselves, “What do I want?” This important reflective question is a good one and becomes even more poignant in those moments of realization that we have limited time on Earth. There’s a fairly malignantly overused neural pathway of “What do I want?” used for shopping and consumption, but let’s try to dismiss that one and turn our focus on another. “What do I want” from the world around me, the world less likely to be affected by my purchases? For instance, ask yourself what do I want my experience to be when I go for a walk, or what do I want from the natural world: for the forests and streams? What do I want for wildlife? What do I want for my family and friends…for my neighbors…for my community? As we look outside of ourselves and express our desires for the larger world, we encounter our social potential: what can we do as members of a community? How can we influence the world to be a better place? Most people know that we influence those closest to us the most and come to know our circle of influence better with age. Some people work to broaden their circle of influence, some to narrow it. If we feel frustration towards the state of the world, we might explore politics at the local level to see how we grow our influence to make a better world. How does this work for what we want from Nature?

I Want Healthy Wildlife Populations

The majority of Americans want wildlife to thrive, to know that humans are well stewarding, even restoring, wildlife populations: this is something with which both liberals and conservatives agree. As I’ve addressed many times in this column before, that sentiment largely lacks evidence in local politics. Our City and County elected officials fail almost every time they are given a choice to better protect wildlife. We live in an area with a very high number of rare and endangered species, and those are only protected because State and Federal officials step in to enforce protections. How can this be the case with the local legacy of environmentalism and environmental education?

The “Teach Them and They Will Care” Fallacy

While people may say “I want healthy wildlife populations!” they apparently favor the sentiment of “I want money” as they keep electing pro-business officials who (mistakenly) believe that environmental protection comes at unacceptable costs to social welfare. And still, the local environmental education community unanimously embraces the fallacy that if you teach them about the environment, they will care enough to protect it. The corollary fallacy is ‘if you give them access to nature, they will care about nature and so nature will be protected.’ These are convenient fallacies because both allow the environmental education and trail building communities to raise funding from the wealthy, pro-business elite; that funding is crucial to keeping their organizations operable. With the “carrot or the stick” dichotomy for environmental protection, there goes the carrot. What about the stick?

Environmental Protection has Become Non-Local

Over the past 20 years, local environmental protection owes much to State and Federal legal ‘sticks.’ Twenty years ago, we made headway with environmental battles via the Coastal Commission’s authority to protect sensitive habitats at Terrace Point, the University, on City Greenbelt lands, and in State Parks. That agency has since abandoned its environmental protection arm, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have since helped protect what they could from a federal perspective. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has only occasionally helped protect the environment on the Monterey Bay, more commonly turning a blind eye to environmental impacts that are clearly within their jurisdiction. However, even so, CDFW has done more than local authorities to protect wildlife. In short, we apparently respond more positively to ‘sticks’ than ‘carrots’ when it comes to caring for wildlife around the Monterey Bay. Ask yourself if this approach aligns with your political beliefs? Do you want more State and Federal enforcement of wildlife protections? Or, would you rather believe that people only need ‘carrots’ to do the right thing for protecting wildlife? If the latter, how do you see things changing, socially or politically, to make that happen? If the former, how is it that you are actively supporting State and Federal agencies who are using sticks to protect wildlife?

Uh-Oh, Wildlife Protections in State Parks?

A while back, Californians realized that State Parks needed better planning to protect wildlife. And so, politicians created a rule that every park must have a plan that addresses wildlife protection, even specifying that those plans have what is called a carrying capacity analysis. Carrying capacity analysis defines an approach to determining how to design park access so that wildlife populations remain healthy. Locally, because of repeated negotiations with environmentalists, State Parks has evolved its approach to such analyses, though they have more recently apparently given up on creating plans for parks, altogether. The General Plan for Castle Rock State Park illustrates how landscape architects very badly approached their mandate for good carrying capacity analysis. In that plan, planners who were inadequately trained in wildlife protection sharpened their crayons and shaded huge bubbles across the park, vaguely labeled as high, medium, and low intensity use. This vague and unenforceable planning conveniently allowed unbridled access everywhere. Now, visitors are degrading very rare wildlife habitat associated with rock outcrops and regionally unique wildlife habitat associated with a black oak forest. Because of the terrible approach outlined in the General Plan, an environmental non-profit was able to construct a visitor center in close proximity to these very sensitive wildlife habitats.

A Curious Evolution

Realizing that people wanted State Parks to do more for wildlife protection, the more recent General Plan for Big Basin State Park improved a smidge on their carrying capacity analysis. That plan well reflects the modern principles of analyzing carrying capacity for wildlife protection, but curiously falls very much short of being meaningful. The Big Basin plan rightly says that it is important to address negative impacts of visitors on wildlife by defining science-based thresholds which would be monitored and, if surpassed, would trigger management actions. However, the plan then (very curiously) fails to define such thresholds.

Aiding and Abetting

The same environmental group that built a visitor center precisely where it would be most likely to negatively impact the most sensitive wildlife habitat at Castle Rock State Park is now proudly advertising a similar approach at Big Basin. Instead of helping the People get what they want (wildlife protection), they are doing a great job of raising capital to support their organization through a campaign of increasing access to Big Basin without a viable method of protecting wildlife at that park. In such a way, the organization illustrates its embrace of the fallacy that increased access somehow increases wildlife protection. As you might suspect, this same organization also embraces the fallacy that milktoast environmental education somehow increases wildlife protection. They are funding the interpretive signs for the planned entrance at Cotoni Coast Dairies; the signs, no doubt, will fail to provide visitors with either the inspiration or information needed for them to take meaningful actions to improve the Bureau of Land Management’s stewardship of wildlife at that park. Wait and see.

What Do You Want?

As you consider Big Basin State Park, Castle Rock State Park, or Cotoni Coast Dairies, ask yourself ‘what do I want for the wildlife of these parks?’ How would you know that you are getting what you want? In no case will you, or the managers of those parks ever know…unless things drastically change. That change will only occur if enough of the right people decide that what they want is important enough to act. In the meantime, please know that all visitor use of parks causes negative impacts to wildlife. If we want to conserve wildlife in parks, it will take a new level of dedication of parks managers to perform adequate carrying capacity analysis, monitoring, and adaptive management. That dedication will only occur with the ‘sticks’ that are luckily available to the citizens who are willing to use them.

Being Present, Naturally

Our best moments are when we feel the most present. The stories we tell, the good ones and the bad ones, reflect on the times when we were most attentive. If you read that statement and let that realization sink in, you might be inspired to take a break from reading this.

The media we return to is that which absorbs us. When we see or read something that catches our attention, we focus on it and the world around us can fall away. Likewise, when we turn our attention outward, the world opens up. The more we pay attention, the more we see. We are incredibly good observers if we stop to do just that.

My favorite way to open myself to discovery, is to find a quiet place in nature and let all that is occurring there slowly reveal itself. There is so much complexity in any wild place that the discovery goes as deep as you are willing to observe.

Jon Young at least used to live near Santa Cruz and has written and taught a lot about how to become more present in the moment and how that presence of mind can help heal. This 17 minute TedX talk summarizes some of his most poignant lessons. Telling stories, listening to stories, being aware of your natural surroundings, and allowing yourself to become more a part of your surroundings are all central themes.

Mr. Young advocates for choosing a ‘sit spot’ to visit as a door-opening exercise to discovering yourself and nature, to finding a way to be present. Visiting one spot in nature and sitting there for an hour regularly with little movement allows us the time for discovery and the time for those beings that occupy that place to accept our presence and reveal themselves.

The Nature of Being in Nature

When we go into nature, how do we change? Some people go into nature for the most active forms of recreation: extreme or less extreme mountain biking, jogging slow or fast, the many forms of exercise for people or beast called ‘horseback riding,’ and then there is destination hiking or exercise hiking. Some people go into nature for more passive activities such as wildlife viewing, natural history study, art, poetry, contemplation, meditation, teaching children, learning from nature, becoming more at one with the wild and other beings, or just plain observation. The active forms of recreation (fast mountain biking, especially) are not compatible in the same time and place with the more passive types of natural area visitation. And yet, natural area managers mostly plan for ‘mixed use’ or ‘multi-use trails,’ mixing all of those uses together when they design and manage open space. This is despite a very well-honed natural areas planning science enshrined by the National Parks Service and other agencies who manage for visitor use expectations and experiences. There are University degree programs focusing on training natural areas managers in this science. Unfortunately, despite the huge investments in natural areas, I am unaware of any such science being applied in our region.

The Num-Num Cult

I recently came across an example of the kindergarten-level conversation we are subject to by the local open space managers who design the visitor use experiences we must tolerate. Check out this survey to “let us know if trails are meeting your needs” recently offered by the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network. The survey is meant to help inform the “State of the Trails Project,” which mostly otherwise appears on the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s website on web searches. You can view a video presentation about this report at this link.

I was disheartened by the survey in that none of the rich passive uses of parks were reflected in the choices respondents could choose from. Using their terminology, all my friends’ uses of parks would be forced to fit into one use – ‘hiking’ – which is very far off from our real and precious experiences in nature. Luckily for us, the survey has blank spots that allow you to add comments.

Majority Rules?

Such a survey makes me wonder where we are heading with managing natural areas for the quality of visitor use experiences. If businesses have any say, they will support visitor use experiences that raise the most capital, experiences with expensive equipment that breaks or wears out. More passive uses of natural areas will never compete. The most passive uses, the most healing uses, will create the least amount of spending. The frugality of healthy people is astonishing.

Will those of us who are turning away from techno-gadgets and buying things be so marginalized that we will have nowhere to go to have the natural areas experiences we cherish?

Nature Heals

Many of us already understand the importance of nature in helping us stay healthy. The most recent term highlighting this phenomenon is called ‘forest bathing.’ Health care professionals recommend forest bathing, which is about practicing mindfulness, being present in nature so that we see the wealth of colors, sounds, and smells that are around us. This requires peace and quiet, the most peaceful places are the places that heal the best.

Wilderness Changed

The term wilderness is fast disappearing, for better or for worse. The term was problematic, anyways as it ignored the wealth of indigenous presence across the whole earth and the importance of indigenous people’s stewardship. And yet, the idea of wilderness being a place where technology, bustle, and noise is left behind, where contemplation and connection with nature are paramount needs to be attended to in our natural areas. Besides the wonky science of natural areas management for the ‘quality of visitor experience,’ it seems we lack a phrase that well contains such places.

Your Turn

I hope that you take the opportunity to fill in that survey and that you let politicians and open space managers know about the many ways that you cherish nature in open spaces. Let’s inform them of the term ‘displacement’ when you no longer feel comfortable going to a natural area because of the type or number of other ‘users.’ Every one of us has a right to our kind of use in natural areas, and it is open space managers’ jobs to accommodate those uses. They should be asking us about the quality of our experiences and adjusting their management to maximize that quality over time.

I hope that you also take some time to do some forest bathing. It will do a world of good. The more of us that do it, the more peaceful the world will become.

-this column originally posted in Bruce Bratton’s esteemed blog at BrattonOnline.com – I strongly suggest you subscribe (and donate to support it!) – this is precious place to learn much of what you should know to be a citizen of the Monterey Bay.

Conservation Land Management: Critical Thinking about Local Matters

When you visit conservation lands, how do you think critically about stewardship? There are various things to consider and ways you might help.

The Balance

Often conservation lands managers mention their obligation to balance conservation with public access. In our area, this is especially true for State Parks and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Here are some Mission Statements to help you understand:

State Parks Mission: “To provide for the health, inspiration and education of the people of California by helping to preserve the state’s extraordinary biological diversity, protecting its most valued natural and cultural resources, and creating opportunities for high-quality outdoor recreation.”

BLM’s mission is “to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of America’s public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.”

The normal thing to do when analyzing how to provide a balance between recreational access and conservation is to perform a carrying capacity analysis, which defines ‘limits of acceptable change.’ Monitoring determines if limits are surpassed, and adaptive management reacts with changes to public access patterns to address any problems. If the carrying capacity analysis process were integrated into a collaborative natural resource management program that welcomed public participation, controversies about changing and limiting public access could be managed with more understanding and cooperation.

Visitor Use Expectations

If they followed state of the art management practices, conservation lands managers would consistently determine what prospective visitors expected and adjust to meet those expectations. Expectations are monitored through interviews and surveys not only of people actually visiting the conservation area, but also prospective visitors in the general population. Managers normally encounter a great deal of diversity of expectations from conservation lands visitors. Some want active recreational experiences – trails/roads to jog along or mountain bike; some mountain bikers even want “rad” experiences involving tricky terrain to navigate at high speed on single track trails. Other visitors hope for quiet, contemplative strolls, opportunities to observe wildlife, or safe places to walk with elderly or very young family members. Still other portions of the population want to recreate on motorized vehicles, fly kites or drones, or rock out with parties involving amplified music and dancing. And, other segments of the population want places to meditate, collect medicinal herbs or edible mushrooms, help with stewardship, or take photographs. Obviously, it is impossible to provide everything to all people on any given parcel of conservation land, but how can managers decide what to do?

Meeting Whose Expectations?

Conservation lands proponents are sensitive about meeting many different expectations because they perceive benefits of increasing the public’s support of conservation lands acquisition, which is expensive. Sometimes this is complicated because lobbyists for various recreationally-oriented businesses are good at amplifying their client’s voices to advocate for specific types of visitor use. Traditionally, hunter groups and off highway vehicle organizations achieved successes this way. More recently, mountain biking organizations have been similarly influencing conservation lands management. Proponents of conservation lands acquisition dodge the tricky nature of favoring some types of visitors over others by public cheerleading for ‘maximum public access’ while privately providing pressure for a small subset of visitors, usually those they think are most politically influential. This is why State Parks managers opened Wilder Ranch hiking trails to mountain biking without any analysis or planning, welcomed the public onto the Coast Dairies’ beaches without environmental review, and allowed a private organization to operate a parking lot, gift shop, and privately controlled entrance to Castle Rock State Park. This is also why the Bureau of Land Management will soon allow e-bikes to use trails at Cotoni Coast Dairies. BLM is also planning on crowding all visitors onto trails that will be so heavily used as to spurn contemplative users while disturbing wildlife enough to alienate bird watchers. Families will have their hopes dashed of viewing sensitive wildlife such as bobcats, badgers, and foxes, species that frequent the property before the public has been admitted.

Coastal Commission Cahoots

I would be remiss if I didn’t remind readers that the much-lauded California Coastal Commission has been a close party to such poor ‘maximize public access’ decisions. Politicians have long appointed Coastal Commissioners who agree to the (bogus) ‘maximize public access’ mantra and who consequently believe that protecting nature gets in the way of their political success. Likewise, staff who support this schtick are empowered and promoted…and an organizational culture has been created that knows little else. And so, our beaches, bluffs, and coastal parks are being overrun by visitors, vegetation trampled, hillsides eroding, and wildlife quickly disappearing.

Quality Experience

In our rush to maximize public access, we are losing the quality of visitor experience. Social scientists have long understood that conservation lands visitor expectations can erode based on what is “normal” to experience. As levels of trash increase, people expect trash…and become more careless about leaving trash in natural areas. With poor planning, parks become more crowded, and people lose expectation of contemplative experiences, nature becomes less healing. As over-used, badly managed trails erode into ditches with holes, elderly people stop visiting their favorite places; the average age of visitors grows younger and younger. As poorly educated conservationists work together for the ‘maximum use’ paradigm, families stop expecting to teach their children about wildlife from first-hand observation and the conservation movement loses wildlife advocates.

Oh, But Funding!

Enter into conversation with conservation lands managers with these critiques and the conversation quickly turns to lack of funding as the excuse. ‘We just don’t have the funding to….’ While I am compassionate to lands managers that they face a very dire funding situation, I posit that such poor funding is a result of bad decisions by individuals within their organization and lack of enlightened leadership in the conservation community.

When you hear complaints about funding, I encourage you to ask some follow up questions, like: ‘Have you completed “Carrying Capacity Analyses?”’ ‘Have you delineated “Limits of Acceptable Change?”’ ‘What has your monitoring revealed about the trends of sensitive plant and animal populations on your land?’ ‘How have you managed for changing visitor use and visitor expectations over time?’ If conservation lands managers prioritized addressing those questions in collaboration with the conservation community and the public at large, funding would be less of an issue. When visitor use is curtailed within the collaborative and adaptive management context, there is increased political support and funding for stewardship, planning, and improved alternatives that better address visitor expectations.

What You Can Do

See something, say something. I encourage everyone to speak up and vote for these issues. Any politician at any level must interact with these issues in some way: they should have clearly stated policies that they support to improve conservation lands management. And, they should know the term ‘carrying capacity analysis’ and support the practice as it relates to conservation lands management.

And, if your expectations are not met when you visit conservation lands, you should let the managers know. Are the trails in good shape? Did you see wildlife? Was it too crowded? Did you feel comfortable with the other kinds of users on the same trails? Was there trash? Were bathrooms adequate? Did you and your family feel safe?

Finally, ask conservation lands managers the questions posed above. Also, ask how you might help to manage and monitor within their defined carrying capacity, or how you might then advocate for increased funding for their adaptive management. These dialogues could help immensely.

-this article originally published by Bruce Bratton at his weekly BrattonOnline.com, an invaluable piece of journalism helping thousands of people keep in touch with what really matters around the Monterey Bay area of California. Subscribe today- better yet, donate to keep it going.

Unbalancing Act: park planners threatening wildlife by appeasing the masses

Here on Santa Cruz County’s North Coast, parks managers aren’t using the normal tools to help them balance recreation and wildlife conservation.  There are numerous proposals for new wild land park access points, trails, campgrounds, parking lots and the like.  Meanwhile, miles of unplanned, ‘illegal,’ uninvited trails from dozens of ad hoc trail heads proliferate, unheeded.

To manage parks correctly, parks managers would normally go through a planning process that includes understanding the current situation, planning for specific goals, and monitoring to see if they got it right.  Park planners start with studying both the wildlife (types, distribution) and likely recreational visitors (expectations).  The results of these studies inform a ‘carrying capacity analysis’ – how many of what kind of human recreational use can occur in a particular area of conservation land without too deleteriously affecting a given set of natural resource goals.  The analysis details thresholds of acceptable change, which sets in motion a monitoring program so that managers can adjust visitor use accordingly.

Limiting wild land visitor use to protect wildlife is a lot like hunting and fishing regulations that have been succeeding well in restoring game species.  Fishing and hunting regulations require good information on how many fish or game can be caught while maintaining or increasing a population.   Regulatory agencies set the regulatory limits of “take” and monitor both the amount of animals reported to have been killed as well as the populations of the animals still alive, adapting regulations on a regular basis to maintain healthy populations.  Hunting and fishing regulations can change yearly. Sometimes, there are moratoriums on “take” of a certain species.

Despite the parallels in theory and efficacy, in actual practice there is divergence between hunting/fishing and management of park visitors, especially here in Santa Cruz County.  Whereas hunting and fishing regulations are widespread and accepted in U.S. culture, Santa Cruz County’s wild land recreation culture hasn’t experienced controls of visitor use, with a couple of exceptions.  The endangered snowy plover and elephant seal both have seasonal closure, prohibiting recreational visitation to the beaches that are critical to their survival:  two of umpteen species protected on a miniscule percentage of our park land.  This is not for want of policies that mandate better park management.

There are many policy mechanisms obligating wild land parks managers towards more effective recreational visitation management.  For instance, California State Parks is required by law to perform a carrying capacity analysis (Pub. Resources Code 5019.5) for all of their parks.  And yet, such analyses have yet to be implemented using modern biological or sociological principles.  Instead, State Parks’ plans contain arbitrary zones grading from high to low recreational use radiating out from the most convenient park entrance.  Likewise, BLM is required to balance recreational and environmental goals and to monitor and adjust visitor use as necessary.   Santa Cruz County Parks and all other parks managers must protect sensitive park locations by limiting use to interpretative activities under the California Coastal Act.  Despite these regulations, between the disinterested public and “slippage” in agency interpretation/implementation, we see little evidence of professional management of recreational use in Santa Cruz County’s precious parks.

What you can do

Each and every time a new access proposal comes forward, ask the organization responsible what they will be monitoring to assure that recreation isn’t causing too much wildlife disturbance.