August 2006

California Oak Report

Up North
Below is a letter from California Oak Foundation to Tehama County regarding insufficient Blue oak woodland mitigation for the Sun City Tehama community development. The 3,320-acre project site near Red Bluff contains 2,172 acres of oak woodlands, with 774 acres (100,000 oak trees) proposed for removal:

August 7, 2006

George Robson, Director
Planning Department
444 Oak Street - Room I
Red Bluff, CA 96080

Re: Sun City Tehama Revised DEIR

Dear Mr. Robson:

The California Oak Foundation (COF) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Sun City Tehama revised DEIR (RDEIR) oak woodlands planning. Upon review, COF must vehemently disagree with the RDEIR finding that, “implementation of Mitigation Measure 4.4-6 would satisfy the requirements of PRC 21083.4 (Senate Bill 1334), Oak Woodlands Conservation.”

Mitigation Measure 4.4-6
“Consistent with the requirements of PRC 21083.4, Oak Woodlands Conservation, the applicant shall record an appropriate legal instrument on the approximately 1,398 acres of preserved oak woodland habitat within the Specific Plan Area to ensure its preservation as undisturbed oak woodland in perpetuity, and/or contribute funds to the Oak Woodlands Conservation Fund. Upon approval of the County Planning Director, the applicant and/or its successor in interest shall be permitted to make encroachments within this preserved area for utility lines/improvements, water pipelines, trails, water quality treatment basins, for any necessary thinning of trees or undergrowth determined necessary to reduce wild fire risks by the California Department of Forestry Fire Prevention and to meet the requirements for fuel modification under the wildfire management plan.”

Mitigation measure 4.4-6 not only fails to provide any meaningful mitigation for the loss of 774 acres of Blue oak woodlands, it allows for the significant biological degradation of the 1,398-acre oak “preserve” from concomitant development impacts. This is particularly true for domestic animals, utility lines and future California Department of Forestry Fire Prevention regulations to reduce fire risks in the urban/wildland intermix zone created by Sun City development. Furthermore, oak preserve encroachments contradict the promised “undisturbed oak woodland in perpetuity.”

SB 1334 Implementation
The purpose of Public Resources Code (PRC) §21083.4 is to provide counties four options to obtain “feasible” and “proportional” oak woodland mitigation where significant impacts occur:

(1) Conserve oak woodlands through the use of conservation easements.
Simply placing 1,398 acres of on-site oak woodlands in a conservation easement doesn’t feasibly or proportionally mitigate for the removal of 774 acres of Blue oak habitat and 100,000 oak trees. If project oak woodland impacts remain significant even with a mitigating on-site oak reserve, then additional PRC §21083.4(b) oak habitat mitigation is required.

(2) Plant an appropriate number of trees.
The RDEIR finds the planting mitigation option impractical: “Given that the areas proposed as open space in the proposed Specific Plan predominantly consist of healthy blue oak woodland, it would not be biologically feasible to establish additional blue oak woodland within the Specific Plan Area.”

(3) Contribute funds to the Oak Woodlands Conservation fund.
The RDEIR leaves open the possibility of a monetary contribution to the state Oak Woodland Conservation Fund but the RDEIR offers no specificity regarding this mitigation option.

(4) Other mitigation measures developed by the County.
Tehama County has no statutory oak conservation standards and the county has not proposed alternative mitigation measures for this project.

Air Quality
In its air quality analysis the RDEIR failed to evaluate carbon sequestration loss from the removal of 774 acres of healthy, vigorously growing oak trees or the carbon release from the combustion of harvested oaks. Notably, the state’s California Climate Registry recognizes that converting oak woodlands to development is a carbon emission, due to lost forest photosynthesis.

Summary
In the eagerness to approve and build Sun City Tehama, both the DEIR and RDEIR have demonstrated total disregard for state laws applicable to oak woodlands. A good faith effort has not been made to alleviate the substantial direct and indirect Blue oak woodland impacts caused by the project.

COF urges Tehama County to require Sun City to comply with PRC §21083.4(b) by making a monetary contribution to the state Oak Woodland Conservation Fund in an amount sufficient to purchase 774 acres of local replacement Blue oak woodlands.

Sincerely,

Janet S. Cobb, President
California Oak Foundation

Climate Protection Offers Oak Woodland Opportunities
The doors of the California Climate Action Registry (CCAR) opened in 2001. The Registry allows members to record voluntary actions taken now to reduce emissions before regulations and trading markets are in place. The Registry is not a market, but its primary purpose is to establish a credible accounting framework needed to support a market. In registering their emissions, corporations demonstrate their ‘climate consciousness’ to shareholders who increasingly demand disclosure of business exposure to climate risks. Over sixty-four entities are now members of CCAR, including all the state’s large electric utilities and several forest landowners (Tuttle 2006).

The state Public Utilities Commission is currently hearing Pacific Gas and Electric's petition to begin a voluntary “Climate Protection” pilot program for customers, using forest projects registered in the CCAR. PG&E anticipates its Climate Protection Program fund will receive approximately $20 million by the end of the three-year demonstration, with a goal of removing at least two million tons of carbon dioxide from the air. This reduction would be the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road for one year.

California allows forest carbon credits for: (1) Reforestation that restores native trees on lands previously forested, but out of tree cover for at least ten years and (2) projects that prevent the conversion of native forests to non-forest use, such as development. Below are a few of the advantages of private rangeland over private timberland for carbon sequestration purposes:

1. Very little timberland is non-stocked with tree species; government incentives in the 1950s-70s have left over 1.2 million acres of former oak woodlands non-stocked and a significant proportion of existing oak woodlands are under-stocked by historical standards (California Energy Commission, 2004).

2. Timberland sequestration necessitates complex long-term management changes; reclaimed oak woodlands require only short-term adaptive management until oak growing-stock is no longer subject to damaging grazing impacts. Traditional rangeland operating income would be augmented by stable forest management proceeds from establishing and maintaining cost-efficient oak woodland carbon sinks.

3. Oak woodlands restoration provides superior carbon sequestration results by maximizing CCAR protocol objectives, while minimizing accountability concerns.

4. Reforestation of rangelands sequesters the most carbon at the least cost. The counties with the least expensive carbon from reforesting rangelands are also the same counties that potentially can sequester the most (California Energy Commission, 2004).

5. Oak woodlands sequestration is not encumbered by the economic, regulatory and political constraints that accompany timberlands. Consequently, rangeland sequestration agreements between private parties will be more readily concluded than corresponding timberland accords.

Announcement
1. 6th California Oak Symposium – California’s oaks: Today’s challenges, tomorrow’s opportunities. October 9-12, 2006 in Sonoma County. Topics include monitoring, restoration, regeneration, livestock relations, utilization, recreation, ecology, fire, wildlife, conservation easements, pest and diseases. Coordinated by the University of California, Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program and sponsored by Audubon California, California Dept. of Forestry and Fire Protection, California Oak Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Pepperwood Foundation, Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, Sonoma County Water Agency, Univ. of Calif. Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, USDA Forest Service, Wildlife Conservation Board.

2. Assembly Bill 32 – Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Nunez/Pavley) . COF urges it’s members and Oak Report subscribers to send a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger (State Capitol, Sacramento, CA 95814) asking him to sign this important legislation which will make California a world leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and producing clean technology.

Merchandise
California Oak Woodland Community poster, a 24” x 18” full-color poster depicts California’s predominant oak tree species and the animals that depend upon them. Orders include a list of the more than 300 species dependent on oak woodlands for food and shelter. $12.00 (members $10.80) plus sales tax, shipping and handling.

New to Our Website
Blue Oaks Adapt to Dry Summer. Blue oaks have evolved to withstand disappointing years of little rain and high temperatures. According to the Oaks of California by Bruce Pavlic, Pamela Muick, Sharon Johnson and Marjorie Popper and co-published by Cachuma Press and the California Oak Foundation, while other oaks are resistant to drought, few of them combine all the mechanisms of conservation, tolerance and resiliency that are present in the blue oak. This information on the variety of characteristics of blue oaks that prepare them for long seasons of no rain is derived from the Oaks of California.