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May 2002
California Oak Report
Counties
Butte County - A developer illegally cut over 100 trees, many of them large oaks, in violation of an agreed upon housing development plan. Three of the oaks were 430 years old. Chico is now requiring the developer to produce a supplemental environmental impact report, which will cost approximately $50,000 and delay the project at least nine months. Mitigations might include reducing the number of lots in the subdivision and replacing mature trees. Since it is impossible to replace 430 year old trees, COF suggests purchasing three (3) oak-woodland acres for every one acre destroyed for dedication to wildlife habitat and a public park. Chico will also begin discussion of expanding the city's limited tree ordinance. See our website for sample ordinance.
Placer County - California Oak Foundation successfully joined with local citizens to halt the proposed removal of 300 to 400 oak trees for the construction of a temporary road byway, part of a project to replace a small bridge.
San Diego County - For the fourth time county officials have passed a General Plan amendment detrimental to oak forests and other natural resources on almost 200,000 acres of backcountry rangelands and wildlands. In 2000 COF filed an amicus (friend?of?the?court) brief in support of a successful lawsuit against a previous version of this egregious General Plan amendment. The State Attorney General joined in that effort. San Diego residents should insist on minimum lot sizes of 160 to 320 acres in order to save the backcountry.
San Luis Obispo County - California Oak Foundation president Janet Cobb recently spoke at a local tree conservation workshop about the need for San Luis Obispo oak-woodland conservation planning. San Luis Obispo County is listed by COF as one of the six worst counties in the state regarding oak woodland management.
Merced County - Cobb spoke to the Merced Sierra Club where gravel mining the Merced River is removing essential riparian habitat. While focus is on appropriate siting of the UC Campus in order to avoid destruction of vernal pools, other important resources are being sacrificed. Merced County has only one environmentally-conscious supervisor. Dedra Kelsey deserves a vote of thanks for her efforts to conserve Merced County's natural resources.
Education
The University of California has issued an excellent new publication, Regenerating Rangeland Oaks in California by Doug McCreary, a COF technical advisor for many years. This manual was written for restorationists, oak woodland managers and others involved in oak propagation and planting projects. Included are chapters on poor natural regeneration, acorn physiology, collection and storage of acorns for regeneration, oak seedling propagation, and planting, protecting, and maintaining oak seedlings in the field. Available through the California Oak Foundation for $10, you can order by fax or use any of the order forms on our website at http://www.californiaoaks.org/html/merch2.html. Also, Oak Woodland Invertebrates, The Little Things Count is available for $5.
The Sierra Nevada Science Symposium 2002, October 8 to 11, will be held at North Lake Tahoe. Complete information at: http://danr.ucop.edu/wrc/snssweb/snss.html. This symposium is intended to promote the dissemination of natural resource scientific information to managers, policy-makers, other scientists and interested public, and, in turn, to inform policy decisions. Presentations will range from the discussion of recently gathered scientific knowledge to the integration of that knowledge into planning and management processes and tools.
The conference proceedings for the symposium Oaks in California's Changing Landscape are now available on-line at http://danr.ucop.edu/ihrmp.
California Spotted Owl
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will conclude its 12 month finding in August regarding whether to list the California spotted owl as endangered. COF has sent the following remarks to the USFWS:
Dear Fish and Wildlife Service:
The California Oak Foundation (COF) appreciates the opportunity to offer additional comments regarding listing the California spotted owl (CSO) as endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). We support this listing based on the inadequacy of existing state and local regulatory mechanisms and the present and threatened destruction of CSO suitable habitat on private timberlands and oak woodlands of the Sierra Nevada and southern California.
The recent CSO conservation measures adopted by the Forest Service for the Sierra Nevada National Forest Plan Amendment FEIS provide no protection for owls that migrate seasonally between public and private timberlands or oak woodlands of the Sierra Nevada. Likewise, no state or local regulations afford any protection for the metapopulation of owls in southern California. In fact San Diego County has recently passed a General Plan amendment which will open 200,000 acres of private hardwood rangelands and wildlands adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest to development. Such private lands were identified by the 1992 owl technical assessment as critical for the dispersal and continued presence of CSO in southern California.
The extensive intermingling of public and private ownerships within the range of the California spotted owl requires that land use actions on private lands be factored in a CSO status assessment, particularly for the southern California metapopulation. The 1992 CSO technical assessment observed:
"The human population in southern California continues to expand into the forested mountain habitats of the spotted owl...Accompanying this growth is a reduction in the quality and amount of forested habitat for spotted owls-a consequence of urbanization, highways and smaller roads, and recreational developments. Given the metapopulation structure of the southern California spotted owl population, recent declines within the largest and most contiguous population in the region, and significant threats to loss of suitable habitat due to rapid human population growth, we believe that a specific conservation strategy is warranted for the subspecies in this part of its range"
The combination of continued significant declines in the CSO population throughout most of its range, rapid human population growth and the absence of integrated local, state and federal protective measures necessitates that the Fish and Wildlife Service list the California spotted owl as endangered under the ESA.
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