“Shifting baselines” is a term used to illustrate how humans acculturate to reduced wildlife, thinking that what they experience is normal and good. “Good enough” is perhaps a better term. Too many people measure success by saying ‘good enough!’ With species diversity in general and wildlife population health specifically, ‘good enough’ for some people is probably not what most people deserve and ‘shifting baselines’ is the problem at hand for large areas of Santa Cruz County.
Current Baseline: Shift Happened
Fifteen thousand years ago, a combination of poor human stewardship and climate change created a mass extinction event in California. Dire wolf, mastodon, mammoth, lion and other big cats, camel and horse relatives, the California turkey, a flightless duck in the lagoon at Laguna Creek, ground sloth, short-faced bear, and a host of other critters disappeared in a very short period of time. We don’t miss those species – they aren’t part of our cultural memory. But, we do seem to reminisce about beaver, gray wolf, tule elk, the California grizzly, badger and pronghorn…species that disappeared from the Central Coast more recently. Well, I’m not sure how many people really think about those species and ‘miss’ them. I do. The miracle recovery of some whale species seems to excite people, but those same people generally don’t consider the vastly reduced numbers of those species. In sum, our current wildlife situation is what is known as ‘depauperate’ – much reduced from historical numbers. And yet, most people think that what occurs today is ‘normal’ and they don’t much think about the opportunities to recover wildlife to more healthy populations on at least public lands in the Central Coast. Our experience of our “biological baseline” is greatly different than humans 15,000 years ago.
What will future generations of humans come to think of as normal? Will they one day realize that California is down to three species of wildlife, all cockroaches, and form some sort of cultural pride to recover the last remaining wild species? This is the trajectory we are moving towards because no one seems to care about the situation with the Central Coast’s wildlife, right now. If they did, local parks managers would hear about it and politicians would hold them accountable.
Parks Manager Responsibility
Whether we are thinking about State Parks or land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the officials in charge of more than 20% of Santa Cruz County have a responsibility to monitor the impact of their management choices and to maintain wildlife populations for future generations. Specifically, all State Parks are required to have a General Plan and, in those plans, to outline how they will manage responsibly to maintain healthy wildlife populations. Similarly, the BLM is required to manage Cotoni Coast Dairies first and foremost for conservation, which requires wildlife surveys be conducted that can inform the agency’s management of livestock, ecosystems, and recreation.
Cotoni Coast Dairies: A Singularly Special Opportunity
What makes BLM’s management of Cotoni Coast Dairies a grandly special opportunity is that the property has not yet been opened to the public, so BLM can collect wildlife data before recreational activities begin to impact species. The wildlife of all other parks has already been negatively impacted by recreational use and so we can’t as easily understand how to improve the management of recreation in those places. Perhaps trail use on the trails BLM has already built will have no impact on wildlife – that would be extremely unusual! Chances are good that recreational use will negatively affect wildlife even hundreds of feet away from the trails. We won’t know how significant those effects will be unless data are collected before recreational use of the trails. And, we won’t learn which species are impacted by what numbers, timing and types of recreational use: those things would be very relevant to BLM and other regional parks managers in order to accomplish their mandates.
Illustration compliments of Steven DeCinzo
On the Other Hand: ‘Good Enough!’
Here’s some of the things I’ve heard about biological baselines to inform land management in Santa Cruz County. Mostly, land managers say that they have enough information to make good decisions. This is important for them to say because they are required to use the best available science. If they say that they don’t have sufficient science, they are admitting fault and might be held liable, so they can’t say anything but that they have enough science already.
When pressed, they say something akin to “Just look! Habitat!” You dare not suggest species are a better measure of management success because they have a world of arguments against that approach. Their argument goes…if you have a grassland, you have done all you can to protect grassland species…a redwood forest! Violà! Redwood forest species all taken care of! If the species aren’t there, they say something like “well, that’s beyond our control” or “they’ll show up some day.” In short…some vague habitat description and a map of the presence of said habitat is ‘good enough.’ The fact is that species are much more sensitive to management of those habitats than manager’s broad brush would suggest. The problem is…any more refined monitoring might be either expensive and/or could hold managers accountable.
Accountability
What if you had rare wildlife species on the land you managed, what would you do? Might you consult with the agency that is responsible for recovering those species? The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has good wildlife biologists, and they have survey protocols that are useful in documenting a species’ presence/abundance. Same with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Would you want to make the public aware of the conservation work you are performing, and how successful it has been? Would you be worried about negative publicity?
Do you think lands managers feel accountable about more than their conservation mandates? Do you think that they feel accountable to certain recreational user groups? How would you know which type of accountability they feel more concerned about?
Your Role
I hope that you have joined a pro-wildlife advocacy group. Working together, we can make sure that the wildlife our children’s children experience is more diverse, and more plentiful, than what we experience now. The alternative is bleak: children fascinated by the last species, raising cockroaches in cages and hoping that their offspring might live in the impoverished ecology resulting from a world of shifting baselines. I don’t think that is good enough.
– this article published in Bruce Bratton’s fabulous weekly blog BrattonOnline.com Sign up at that site to get the alert that it is out and then enjoy some quality time reflecting on news that matters…as well as excellent film/media reviews.
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.
Santa Cruz County’s newest conservation land managers are supposed to conserve the wildlife prioritized by the State of California, but are failing to acknowledge their obligations, which means some of our area’s iconic wildlife species will disappear faster due to lack of Federal cooperation at Cotoni Coast Dairies.
Background
The Bureau of Land Management oversees management of Cotoni Coast Dairies, but it is following much-outdated wildlife conservation guidance. Land management agencies like the BLM are guided by policies and procedures that guarantee that they do a good job of managing wildlife. For instance, BLM has its 6840 Manual “Sensitive Species Management,” which notes:
“The objectives of the BLM special status species policy are:
A. To conserve and/or recover ESA-listed species and the ecosystems on which they depend so that ESA protections are no longer needed for these species.
B. To initiate proactive conservation measures that reduce or eliminate threats to Bureau sensitive species to minimize the likelihood of and need for listing of these species under the ESA.”
In other words, BLM recognizes that the agency should not be contributing to wildlife species becoming rarer and so receiving more regulatory protection, which would impact private landowners by restricting the uses of their property.
Mouritsen’s Duty, Neglected
To avoid that, BLM California’s State Director Karen Mouritsen is required to, “at least once every 5 years,” review and update the BLM-maintained list of sensitive species in coordination with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). It is unusual for such policy guidance to lay out a specific timeline, which adds clarity to expectations. The last time California BLM’s sensitive wildlife list was updated was in 2010, before Director Mouritsen’s tenure: 13 years ago! A lot has changed in those intervening years, and scientists have recognized that many more wildlife species are in need of protection by BLM.
Repercussions at Cotoni Coast Dairies
What happens when BLM’s sensitive wildlife species list isn’t updated? Let’s look at the Cotoni Coast Dairies example. BLM has already completed a Resource Management Plan that is meant to guide wildlife conservation on the property. Under the guidance and environmental review provided by the RMP, the agency is building miles of trails and parking lots, implementing a cattle grazing program, and allocating funding to other prioritized activities. BLM will soon embark on a Science Plan for the property. The RMP didn’t and the Science Plan will not consider conservation of wildlife species that do not appear on the BLM’s sensitive species list. And so, the following 10 rare wildlife species will receive no attention, pushing them further towards extinction: ferruginous hawk, grasshopper sparrow, Northern harrier, olive-sided flycatcher, American badger, San Francisco dusky-footed woodrat, Western pond turtle, California red-legged frog, American peregrine falcon, and short-eared owl.
A Deeper Dive – Grasshopper Sparrow
Let’s consider one of those species with a little more detail, the grasshopper sparrow. If this species is nesting in an area, under California law they are protected and our state wildlife agency, CDFW, has been charged with their conservation. According to BLM guidance, Director Mouritsen is 13 years overdue in updating the agency’s sensitive wildlife list for California to include this species. As their name suggests, grasshopper sparrows are grassland-dependent organisms. There is an abundance of nesting grasshopper sparrows at Cotoni Coast Dairies.
Without active management such as with carefully planned livestock grazing or fire, all of the grasslands at Cotoni Coast Dairies will disappear, being invaded first by brush and then by trees. This is already happening with extensive French broom and coyote brush invasion.
Already, BLM has planned its livestock grazing and recreational trail uses without consideration of preferred habitat for nesting grasshopper sparrows. Livestock grazing could be taking place to the detriment of the species, already. The construction of recreational trails and parking lots may have already destroyed important nesting habitat. When recreational visitors start using those facilities, it may occur before BLM has a baseline study of the density and location of nesting grasshopper sparrows. So, the agency will be unable to understand how land uses are impacting the species and so will be unable in an informed way to adjust its recreational or livestock management to better conserve the species.
It may well be that BLM’s management of Cotoni Coast Dairies will further reduce nesting populations of grasshopper sparrow, pushing the species closer to the point where they will need to be listed as threatened or endangered. When that occurs, private landowners whose land supports nesting grasshopper sparrows will see increased regulation and oversight by the State and/or Federal government. Their property values will be reduced and their ability to develop homes, farms, or other uses will be diminished.
An Alternative
On the other hand, if the California BLM State Director Mouritsen were to meet her regulatory obligation and update the BLM State Sensitive Wildlife Species List in the near future, a bunch of good would result. First, Cotoni Coast Dairies’ Science Plan could provide guidance for conserving those species. Second, because BLM funding is tied to the number of sensitive species on each property, Cotoni Coast Dairies would be better situated for increased conservation funding. If the Science Plan succeeded in moving forward the conservation of sensitive species like the grasshopper sparrow, BLM’s leadership on these issues could help many other land managers do the right thing for species, contributing to the potentiality of ‘delisting’ species, reducing the potential for increased regulatory burden and loss of private property values.
Do Your Part
I’ve said it before in this column, but I’ll say it again. NOW is the time to write Director Mouritsen to urge her to do her job. She hasn’t replied to any of the numerous letters she’s already received, so evidently she needs more pressure to take this seriously. Here’s some language to send to her via her email kmourits@blm.gov Please let me know (or cc me) if you send something.
Dear Director Mouritsen,
I care about wildlife and plant conservation on BLM’s Cotoni Coast Dairies property in Santa Cruz County. I write to urge you to help by adding sensitive species found on that property to the State BLM’s sensitive species lists. Only if those species are on the State’s lists will local administrators consider impacts of their management on those species in their analyses and planning for the property. So, I ask that you please:
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive wildlife list in collaboration with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as mandated by the BLM’s 6840 Special Status Species Manual.
This list was last updated in 2010, but you are required to update it at least every 5 years.
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive plant list to include the State ranked 1B plant species documented at Cotoni Coast Dairies, as mandated by the 6840 Manual.
I would appreciate a reply to this email with details about how you intend to address these issues.
Signed, xx (you!)
-this post originally appeared as part of Bruce Bratton’s amazing weekly blog at BrattonOnline.com You an sign up and receive it automatic-like if you visit this site. You will be rewarded by getting smart commentary and news that is very relevant to life in general and life on the Monterey Bay specifically.
Someone new on the scene recently asked me to explain the history of what went wrong at Cotoni Coast Dairies. After many, many years, the property still isn’t being managed for wildlife or public safety, and it still isn’t open to the public. As a prelude to this, I urge readers to read my essay on how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) came to manage the property in the first place…a curious story, indeed. This essay compliments that prior essay with more details, especially since BLM took over managing the property. Soon, I’ll be writing the third in this series with suggestions about what is needed to improve this unfortunate situation.
Years of On the Ground Nothing, or Worse
Since its purchase for conservation, Cotoni Coast Dairies has a history of very little stewardship and management. Trust for Public Land purchased the property in 1998 and held it until 2014. During that time, managers working for the Trust for Public Land did almost nothing to maintain the property. Occasionally, someone would show up to clear some anticipated future trail. For instance, TPL contractors extensively cleared riparian vegetation along Liddell Creek, chainsawing decades-old willow trees that shaded endangered fish habitat and provided cover for the endangered California red-legged frog. They argued that the clearance was along an ‘existing road,’ and they started putting this trail on early maps as a favored future public access point. (The trail later appeared on BLM’s maps, but federal wildlife protection agency personnel demanded otherwise, so the trail disappeared from plans.) Otherwise, TPL let fences, gates, and culverts rust away, roads and trails erode, weeds spread, and fuels build up creating hazardous conditions for future wildfires.
In 2014, BLM took over management of Cotoni Coast Dairies, and those same patterns largely continued. Early on, BLM staff constructed a new trail, carving through nests of state-listed sensitive wildlife without required State consultation. Like TPL, BLM staff have either overlooked erosion issues along roads or graded long abandoned ‘existing roads’ (aka ‘future trails’) with uncannily similar detrimental impacts to rare fish and amphibians. Meanwhile, terrible weeds and immense wildfire risks continued to spread across the property. The reason BLM staff have given for such poor stewardship: ‘we don’t have an approved plan.’ That changed, but management hasn’t…except for one new stretch of cattle fence and subset of future trails being created mainly by volunteers. The trails and fence came before any work on invasive species or wildfire mitigation, so we sadly sense BLM staff priorities have been directed away from conservation towards recreational access.
Decades of Funky Planning and Community Engagement
Staff from both TPL and BLM have sporadically spent a bit of time working on poor planning processes or participating in largely perfunctory public meetings about property management at Cotoni Coast Dairies. In the year 2000, TPL convened and facilitated a Community Advisory Group (CAG) to advise on guidelines meant to be used by future managers. A few of us on the CAG were asked to provide feedback about the biological portion of those guidelines, but we were unable to improve the largely cursory and incomplete biological assessments used to guide future property management. It is unclear if those guidelines have ever been used by BLM, or if TPL even cares.
BLM has done little to inventory the property, so it has very poor information with which to plan its management. And so, BLM’s plans have overlooked species and ecosystems that are easily identified and/or previously catalogued by reputable sources. This alienates the conservation community including the wealth of well-trained scientists that this region enjoys.
Instead of the long series of TPL’s CAG meetings, BLM staff have appeared for a very few community-engagement-style meetings, including one early on that was convened and facilitated by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. That Land Trust meeting surprisingly and very oddly focused on weighing pros and cons of parking lot locations, but it was never clear why public input was sought or what became of it afterwards. In the midst of this, an outside funder parachuted in hundreds of thousands of dollars so that several local organizations could mount a seemingly ‘grassroots’ Monument Campaign.
Monument Ahoy
In 2015, The Sempervirens Fund led the “Monument Campaign,” a fast-paced, highly scripted, well-funded effort to organize rallies and letter writing to show public support for National Monument designation of Cotoni Coast Dairies. In what is increasingly common “fake news,” the bulk of the Monument Campaign messaging was about opening the property for public use, while in fact Monument designation is more about improving conservation of the property…which would typically increase limitations on public access. This nonsense was compounded by campaign organizers’ refusal to address how designation would increase deed restriction protections already in place from TPL. Furthermore, organizers dismissed concerns about managing the anticipated influx of visitors drawn to something called a National Monument. How important the Monument Campaign was in Obama’s designation is unclear, but the divisions in the community were deep and lasting. Organizers were successful in coalescing well-meaning but very poorly informed people whose nonsensical byline was “Monument designation means my family will be able to visit!” On the other hand, there was a surprisingly politically diverse coalition equipped with well-informed questions and concerns that were never addressed. After that local experience, it is difficult for me to believe that any political faction is immune from using scripted ‘truthiness,’ hype, or even lies when they feel those tools necessary in attracting popular support for secret agendas. Unsurprisingly, leaders of the ephemeral Monument Campaign movement have since disappeared from involvement, leaving the aftermath for the real, long-term grassroots organizations to deal with, and we have yet to experience any conservation benefit of Monument designation.
Pop Up Trail Plans, Abandoned
As the Monument Campaign launched in 2015, BLM issued a proposal for the property’s first public access trail, aka the “Laguna Trail,” in an expedited environmental review process that showed our community how poorly equipped BLM staff were to adequately plan for the property. BLM staff relied on old, insufficient biological inventories for their analysis, failed to survey for endangered species, and did not include any analysis of how the trail would address social equity concerns in providing for visitor use. BLM staff did not respond to the many concerns raised by the public but instead completed their pro-forma circulation and approval of planning documents and rapidly deployed machinery and workers to clear the trail. Trail construction proceeded without conforming to even the nominal environmental guidelines outlined in BLM’s planning documents. The hastily constructed trail cut through state-protected wildlife habitat, degraded historical artifacts, and came very close to a native village site which BLM failed to plan for protecting. In addition, if the project had proceeded, BLM would have opened a trail beginning at Laguna Creek Road and Highway 1 without any new parking, litter, or bathroom facilities, without sufficient staffing for enforcement or interpretation, and without a recreational plan for the property as a whole to analyze how to best protect wildlife while providing public access. This pop up trail was BLM’s way of introducing themselves to the land and to our community.
Introductions to BLM Planning Procedures
As the first federal land manager in the County, it was BLM staff who introduced our community to the federal government’s environmental planning process. This introduction was surprising in many ways. We had been accustomed to public lands managers paying careful attention to protecting “environmentally sensitive habitat areas” (ESHA) according to Coastal Commission rules. Not so with this property – BLM staff didn’t even provide the public maps of those regulated habitat areas in any of their planning documents! With the promise of National Monument protections, we were hopeful that BLM staff would follow the required and highly regimented process outlined in BLM’s policy “Manual 6220,” which provides staff with guidelines on how to manage national monuments. Again, not so! In fact, BLM staff have not used the 6220 manual and have neglected any public acknowledgement of the manual, as if they do not intend to use it, at all. Moreover, BLM staff have never specifically acknowledged the many species and ecosystems protected through the monument designation process. Monument management protocol seems irrelevant to BLM staff, who are apparently bent on expediting the public access so vocally anticipated by the Monument Campaign (coincidence?).
The job ain’t finished until the paperwork is done! Cartoon compliments of DeCinzo, Caption by Grey Hayes
Expediting Public Access
BLM staff have chosen expediency over thoroughness in each of their property planning exercises. For their most recent property-wide plan, instead of data-based predictions of visitor use, BLM staff chose a largely arbitrary low-ball figure of 250,000 anticipated visitors/year for the property. Instead of the logical in-depth alternatives analysis of a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), BLM staff have chosen expedited Environmental Analysis (EA) processes, complete with incredible conclusions of ‘Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI),’ despite significant contrary expert testimony that has gone unaddressed and unacknowledged. As we learned for the first time about its ‘federal consistency process,’ the Coastal Commission recently mandated that BLM use a phased approach to opening the property to public use. The Coastal Commission required that only if/when the BLM proved it could adequately manage public use could it open the full range of parking lots and trails; that proof requires monitoring and such monitoring would normally require a baseline inventory of sensitive natural resources, but we have yet to see that happen…we don’t even know the language to which the BLM and the Coastal Commission have agreed.
Nipping at the Community
My personal interactions with BLM staff have historically been less than pleasant, perhaps because those staff members are unused to much public engagement. My experience of poor interactions with BLM staff isn’t isolated. Someone suggested that this might be partly because those staff feel ‘rocked back on their heels’ because of criticism of their work, which is odd because our comments have been professional, polite, and part of what BLM should expect as public lands planning processes. A BLM staffer told me long ago that their colleagues were in for a surprise as they encountered the very actively involved communities of Santa Cruz County’s North Coast. Previously, most BLM staff working at Cotoni Coast Dairies had worked very much out of the public eye, in remote parts of California with little/no public oversight.
While we can’t ascertain why BLM staff have avoided offers for assistance, their subterfuge is as enlightening as it has been damaging. My compassion about staff feeling rocked back on their heels is limited because BLM staff have sought to discredit my work and harm my reputation, even approaching employers with false information to negatively affect my job while also giving ultimatums to conservation networks to preclude my participation. During one encounter at a public meeting, a BLM staff person told me that they would never collaborate with me or the groups with whom I worked because I was “against any public access at Cotoni Coast Dairies.” That was an incorrect statement about my position that I had likewise been hearing from a particularly activist, radical group of mountain bikers. As this BLM staff person echoed that quote, it was possible to better understand communication channels and allegiances.
My earliest interactions with BLM staff at Cotoni Coast Dairies were when I proposed assistance for biological monitoring. I and a few other biologists offered BLM free assistance with biological surveys to improve their understanding of the property. After that proposal, over a very long time, a BLM staff person strung us along through an incorrect informal process without ever encouraging us or acknowledging the potential value of such work. There was a chain of calls and emails that each ended with something like ‘well, maybe….’ By the time we subsequently discovered the correct application process and applied in that way, leadership had changed and the application was then officially refused.
Cumulative Impacts: Traffic, Trauma, Toilets and Trash (the 4 T’s)
It is important to view BLM’s problems in the context of issues related to visitor access on conservation lands throughout Santa Cruz County. As with all of the other public lands managers, BLM has been planning for visitor use and conservation in a vacuum, as if the surrounding lands don’t exist: this is a deeply flawed perspective. Much of the land from Santa Cruz City to the County line is heavily used by recreational visitors. Most weekends, parking lots overflow with cars and parked cars dangerously line the highway. There are too few trash cans and toilets to serve those visitors. Police and emergency responders are stretched to respond to the many accidents such visitation is bound to create.
County Parks, State Parks, the City of Santa Cruz, the Rail Trail, and BLM each have their own properties to manage and the same 4 T’s issues to address, but they aren’t doing it collaboratively. It is clear that none of those agencies has the resources to address those issues and so those issues are borne by our community. Visitors have come to expect trashy beaches. Emergency responders have come to expect exhaustion and insufficient support. Visitors with elderly family members or small children are avoiding parks due to dangerous or disgusting conditions. As each agency plans in isolation to provide for the maximum number of visitors, parks managers are dooming wildlife and visitor experience – the carrying capacity for the entire North Coast will be surpassed. It is no wonder that our community does not trust BLM to be able to manage their land and the visitors that they plan on attracting. BLM entered an arena of mistrust and fueled the fire with their own mistakes.
Who is Responsible?
Those of you who know me well know I don’t like the passive tense: I like clearly stating the subjects of verbs…who (specifically) is responsible for doing what (specifically). And yet, agencies like BLM are opaque…staff even refuse to specify who is specifically responsible for anything you might witness happening. But, placing the entire blame of the tragedy of Cotoni Coast Dairies on current BLM staff is unfair. Local, state and federal elected officials also bear some responsibility; good intel is that some of them have even winked behind closed doors in Washington DC, saying that local concerns needn’t be addressed. But again, placing a large amount of blame on elected officials also doesn’t seem fair: after all, they should be swayed by popular opinion (or at least election).
We saw how enough funding swayed popular opinion with the Monument Campaign, right? Apparently, no funders have been inspired to sway popular opinion in favor of wildlife protection on conservation lands in this particularly biodiverse region. Even if they did, there is a dearth of organizations who would lead that campaign. And so, in regard to the tragedies unfolding at Cotoni Coast Dairies and across Santa Cruz County’s North Coast, we must bear the brunt of blame within our community, which has long lacked leadership, energy, and focus on environmental conservation. For more on that, read my essay “Democracy and the Environment.” And, stay tuned for the third in this series of essays where I will outline steps forward out of this unfortunate predicament.
-this article adapted and updated from what appeared in late March at Bruce Bratton’s blog BrattonOnline.com
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.
I recently came across my 1998 copy of the Pogonip Master Plan and was inspired to share with you some inspiration and interesting tidbits. I find Santa Cruz’ Pogonip Greenbelt an amazingly beautiful place that renews my energy, fuels my curiosity, and, each visit, shows me something new. It is so nice to keep going back to the same places for the last 33 years…to check out favorite trees, familiar meadows, patches of fleeting wildflowers that return each spring, and ancient woodrat houses. Behind this natural beauty is a web of relationships mediated by the City of Santa Cruz Parks Department and guided by the Pogonip Master Plan.
Our Pogonip Vision
In 1991, the Pogonip Task Force formulated the following vision statement for the Pogonip Greenbelt:
Pogonip is a place to be appreciated for its natural beauty, habitat value and serenity, in contrast to the built environment. Pogonip should provide the community with education and recreation opportunities that are environmentally and economically sustainable.
Weighing the Vision
Since 1991 and the subsequent adoption of the Pogonip Master Plan, how have we done with stewardship of this amazing 640-acre greenbelt? In short, we don’t know. There are no publicly available monitoring reports for anyone to understand how ‘habitat value’ has fared or whether people find ‘serenity’ by visiting there. The City’s Pogonip webpage for some reason posts a link to a private recreational organization’s article on the property, which suggests avoiding areas due to dangerous heroin dealers- that doesn’t sound serene to me. We do know that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ so judging whether or not that part of the vision statement has been realized is too subjective.
The second part of the vision statement emphasizes sustainability, but nowhere in the document are there any metrics for judging how sustainability might be monitored. One would assume that environmental sustainability metrics for recreational opportunities would include at least soil erosion, wildlife disturbance, and invasive species or pathogen spread.
Updating the Vision
Nearly 30 years later, in 2020 the City created the more recent and very poorly done “Santa Cruz Parks Master Plan 2030” which well reflects the changing nature of City politics…to business-minded anti-environmental politicians. This plan emphasizes Park ‘assets’ – trails other types of development potential of the property – somehow overlooking sensitive habitats that were clearly delineated in the Pogonip Master Plan. It does not provide an updated vision or any new data to help us understand how well Pogonip is faring.
Don’t Yell ‘FIRE!’
The Pogonip Master Plan rightly acknowledges the importance of managing the property for wildfire, prescribing an array of management activities. Search “Pogonip Fire” on the internet and you’ll be able to peruse the many recent fires in that greenbelt. Here’s a list of the 9 easy to find ones:
July 14, 2009 – unknown acres
July 23, 2021 – ½ acre
July 13, 2015 – 3 acres
October 15, 2021 – 2 acres
November 7, 2018 – ? acres
October 16, 2021 – 2 fires, ? acres
June 20, 2020 – 2 acres
June 4, 2022 – ½ acre
November 8, 2020 – 1 acre
Recent Fires in Pogonip’s Extremely Flammable Landscape
Pretty Neat Map
Here’s a map of from the 1998 Master Plan – it has a lot of interesting things on it. First, it illustrates the ways the City was planning on managing the property for fire. Along fire roads, every 10 years the City was going to thin and prune limbs. They were also going to do prescribed burns, mow and graze. They haven’t grazed or done any prescribed fire…and the mowing hasn’t been nearly that extensive.
Pogonip Master Plan’s Interesting Map
It is also interesting to note that there are wetlands mapped in the Upper Main Meadow…right where leaders of the Homeless Garden Project have said that there weren’t any wetlands.
Pogonip and You
This greenbelt property deserves your attention. I advise you to visit and enjoy it – there is a lot going on with wildlife, views, and amazing smells of autumn. You can join the occasional volunteer days to help do restoration- one is coming up on October 29 (email me if you’re interested)! Also, why not ask your City Council members what’s going on with the studies in the Lower Main Meadow- the area slated for the Homeless Garden Project; there were going to be lead contamination studies and a development plan by the Garden folks. Also, you might ask the City what they are doing to assure that the property is safer for fire: why don’t they graze or do prescribed fire…what about more mowing? Finally, wouldn’t it be nice to get periodic updates from Parks on the state of our Greenbelt, including how environmentally sustainable recreation is being managed…and whether the habitat values are improving or degrading?
-this article reprinted from its original location at Bruce Bratton’s online BrattonOnline.com blog- a treasure for our local community…please subscribe, donate/support!
What’s going on with public land management around you, and what are you doing about it?
Most citizens of the U.S.A. state that they want healthy wildlife populations and clean water for their communities and for future generations to enjoy. And yet, repeated surveys of Santa Cruz County residents suggest declining efforts to learn about wildlife so that individuals could take action to protect assure wildlife conservation. We can see this decline also reflected in our activism and politics. When was the last time you heard about an environmental activist group taking a stand to protect local wildlife? Which politician can you name that had environmental conservation as a major portion of their platforms? Have you looked at the agendas or minutes from Santa Cruz County’s Commission on the Environment or Fish and Game Commission – both advisory bodies to County Supervisors? I challenge you to find any evidence of solicited or unsolicited advice to the Supervisors. In short, our County, at the top of the nation’s biodiverse counties, is effectively asleep while their precious natural heritage is being rapidly eroded by neglect. I frequently hear how much Santa Cruzans appreciate the wildlife, the open space, and the natural beauty of this area. If we take these things for granted and do not make efforts to be involved with conservation, I think we know what will happen to these values: they will decline, whither, and disappear altogether with time. It is time to make a shift, and the shift is best focused on our public lands management.
One of the most important things we can do as citizens of this county is to be involved with the management of the public lands around us. There are many ways to be involved in wildlife conservation on public lands throughout the region: volunteering for stewardship, rallying political support for increased conservation on public lands, and supporting environmental conservation organizations. There are three main threats facing nature conservation public lands: changed disturbance regimes, invasive species, and poor management of visitor use. I discuss each briefly in the following and present ways that you might be involved in solution for improved public lands management.
With climate change and increased development encroachment on natural areas, natural disturbance regimes, such as fire and grazing, are rapidly changing presenting a high degree of danger to nature conservation. With climate change, fires are expected to be more frequent and more severe; this is exacerbated by increased human interactions at the Wildland Urban Interface where accidental fires more frequently occur. Likewise, we have removed tule elk and pronghorn and it is becoming increasingly difficult for natural areas managers to use livestock to mimic natural grazing regimes. With both fire and grazing, public lands managers need more public funding to increase their ability to manage natural systems. There needs to be more public outcry and support for both funding and expertise within those agencies to improve lands management. Those kinds of support are also important for invasive species management. A different kind of support is needed for better management of natural areas in the face of poor visitor use management.
Badly managed visitor use in natural areas is a major cause of concern globally for nature conservation, and locally this seems to be nearly entirely ignored. The most glaring evidence that this is a problem is the nearly ubiquitous and unquestioned philosophy that increased access to natural areas is an important goal for nature conservation. Look carefully around our local parks agencies and you’ll also notice that there are no personnel trained at managing the conflict between nature conservation and visitor use, the field of study necessary to assure nature conservation in parks. The most recent planning effort for visitor use in a public park was with the BLM’s Cotoni Coast Dairies property, a real disaster in public process with recreational infrastructure development proceeding apace despite an active and unsettled legal appeal by a very small of citizens who have seen too little community support. Of the many larger, environmental groups in the area, only the Sempervirens Fund has offered publicly stated concern…”Important details remain to be determined and we look forward to working with BLM to resolve them.” For the grave impacts to nature from visitor use in natural areas, there seems to me to be a need for a fundamental shift in both public perception and in the public lands management agencies to better recognize and address this issue. The following section outlines some actions you can take to help this process forward.
There are many ways, big and small, for you to be more involved with the paradigm shift needed to better address the serious issues surrounding visitor use management in natural areas. First and foremost, many more of us should become educated about the science documenting the concerns and how those concerns are addressed through social and environmental carrying capacity analysis and adaptive management. Social carrying capacity analyses define the limits of acceptable change from visitor use conflicts: conflicts between different types of uses (for instance, mountain bikers vs. passive recreational use of families with children) or conflicts due to overcrowding. Ecological carrying capacity analyses define the limits of acceptable change for soils, biota, or other natural phenomenon (for instance, amounts of trail erosion, wildlife such as cougars that are easily disrupted by visitors).
Another thing we can do to help the situation of poor visitor use management in our parks is to advocate for improvement. We should tune our senses to notice negative impacts of visitor use and then aim our activism towards change: make formal reports of issues to natural area managers, follow up on those reports, and also message higher level administration, commissions overseeing those agencies, and politicians who are invested in agency oversight. Persistence will help. Let’s also vote for politicians who promise to help. And, let’s support environmental groups who promise to work on these issues. Finally, many more people who care about these issues need to be involved with public lands management planning. Currently, mainly exploitive and well-funded non-passive recreational users are organized and vocal during these processes (i.e., Outdoor Industry Association funded groups like mountain biking advocates). Meanwhile, traditional conservation groups like the Sierra Club and Audubon Society have shied away from such issues due to either controversy or co-option. We need a new group or need to sway old groups to take these issues on.
-this article originally appeared at Bruce Bratton’s weekly BrattonOnline.com If you haven’t subscribed, I recommed it: “The last great news sources of Santa Cruz.”
Grey Hayes 