conservation corridors in southern CA

[Emily]

this is not from a hunting perspective, but it explains a lot about a plan to connect wild areas in southern California to help wildlife, and the thinking behind it. The people considered "experts" here may not be to our taste, but it is interesting reading.
from the San Diego Union-Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/scie ... 0wild.html
there are a lot of pix and maps if you click on the link
Local wilderness corridors help species avoid isolation and extinction

By Mike Lee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 20, 2008
To most passers-by, the vast valley that drains into Lake Henshaw offers little more than a scenic diversion on the way to Julian.

JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
A view to the east from Cuyamaca shows the San Felipe Valley, a key wildlife pathway.
But to wildlife scientists, it's one of the 15 critical wildlife corridors left in Southern California because it connects Palomar Mountain and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

Yesterday, after six years of work, South Coast Wildlands and about 20 partner groups released the most comprehensive assessment ever done of the region's habitat links and created what is likely to be a national model for conservation planning.

Graphic:

Southern California
wildlife links (PDF)
“This really is the leading edge,” said Paul Beier, a co-author of the linkages document and a conservation biologist at Northern Arizona University. “We have done a great job of making a scientifically rigorous assessment (of) what lands will best serve the needs of all native species.”

Using geographic information systems and more than 60 academic studies, the South Coast Missing Linkages Project offers detailed maps of the pathways that connect the large patches of open space owned mainly by state and federal agencies. The central goal is to enhance the movement of plants and animals between segments of more than 18 million acres of protected lands.

Mountain lions are of special concern because they require large areas to roam. Researchers used radio-collar tracking studies to identify the routes the lions already use and target those lands for special protections from development.



Movable feets: These are some of the 109 “focal species” whose movements were studied by scientists mapping Southern California's wildlife corridors.
Three of the wildland linkages are in North County and three more – which have yet to be mapped in detail – cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The others stretch as far north as Bakersfield, where thin strands of habitat connect the Sierra Nevada mountains to the coastal range.

The maps are both heartening and sobering. They show that Southern California – one of the world's biodiversity hot spots – still has enough open space to support a wide range of native plants and animals. However, they also provide a reminder that if those linkages are broken, species will become isolated in smaller and smaller pockets of land.

“The exciting thing for me is that we ... can have 20 million people coexisting with intact wildlands. We haven't lost them yet,” Beier said.

Project proponents said the pathways will help agency officials and conservation leaders focus on the most important areas to safeguard. For instance, county officials are consulting the maps as they create two large-scale species conservation plans for north and east San Diego County.

The maps also can be used by the California Department of Transportation to locate places where improvements such as bridges and stream culverts could be designed to help the movement of wildlife. In addition, the maps support conservation leaders' long-standing vision of a “vegetated land bridge” over Interstate 15 near Fallbrook as a way to facilitate migrations for mountain lions and other species.

The pathways are taking on increasing significance as global warming alters habitats.

“As we protect these linkages from the valley floor to the mountains, there will be some escape routes for species” to find suitable microclimates at higher elevations, said David Van Cleve, a senior official with The Nature Conservancy in San Diego.


JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
Conservationists hope to ensure that the Boucher Hill area of Palomar Mountain State Park stays connected to open lands to the west, including Camp Pendleton.


JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
The valley that drains into Lake Henshaw is one of 15 critical wildlife corridors identified and mapped by conservationists.


David Van Cleve of The Nature Conservancy and Kristeen Penrod of South Coast Wildlands were among experts involved in the project, which brought together about 20 partner groups.
Creating a network of conservation areas is a departure from old-school ecology, which relied heavily on government agencies such as the National Park Service setting aside huge chunks of property. That's not viewed as practical these days.

“It's much more efficient both in terms of economics and in terms of biology to create linkages between the existing reserves,” Van Cleve said.

That approach relies on cooperative agreements with private property owners. Land conservancies, working with state and federal agencies, commonly provide financial incentives for landowners to limit development or improve the habitat on their parcels.

Thanks to the linkage blueprint, that can happen in a targeted and scientifically defensible way.

The new atlas has its roots in a statewide conference eight years ago that included some 200 land managers, scientists and conservationists. They identified 232 linkages statewide – a number that was too big to tackle all at once, said Kristeen Penrod, conservation director at South Coast Wildlands, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles that coordinated the pathways project.

Making a connection
The creation of the “missing linkages” for Southern California involved five steps:

Selection of 109 focal species that represent the diverse needs of the region's plants and animals.

Analysis of elevation, vegetation, road density and other factors to define the best routes between preserved lands.

Identification of priority areas needed to maintain the links.

On-the-ground investigation of the models.

Compilation of analyses and fieldwork into final maps.

She and her colleagues whittled the number down to 15 Southern California links that “are so important that if even one fails, the biological integrity of the entire region would be compromised.”

At first, the links were nothing more than arrows on a map. But over time, conservationists have refined the corridors down to a matter of meters.

Doing that took several steps, starting with the selection of 109 “indicator species,” including black-tailed jack rabbits, badgers, golden eagles and white alder.

Next, the scientists performed what they call a “landscape permeability analysis,” a computer technique that models the difficulty that the various species would have moving between large conserved areas. Factors include vegetation types, elevation, slope and road density.


JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
Tom Oberbauer, chief of multiple species conservation planning for the county, and Mary Loquvam, executive director of South Coast Wildlands, toured areas covered by the mapping effort.
The best potential route for each species was combined with the others to create the most favorable path for all modeled plants and animals.

After that, the scientists factored in the size of habitat parcels in the pathways and whether they are close enough to benefit the species.

Researchers then checked the models during field trips and documented migration barriers such as roads.

In addition to generating maps, South Coast Wildlands and its partners offered several recommendations for how to improve the habitat connections. They include: designing road culverts to maximize wildlife use, encouraging the use of native plants by residents, enforcing leash laws on public lands to reduce predation of wildlife, and stopping illegal use of off-road vehicles.


Advertisement

Now that the South Coast report is done – at the cost of about $700,000 – Penrod and others aim to export their analytical approach.
“Let's do the rest of California at the level of detail that actually provides an implementable vision,” she said.

[Emily]

http://scwildlands.org/index.aspx

[Emily]

here's a story from Missoula Montana about a developer that wants to put housing in a grizzly corridor. Buyer beware!

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008 ... news03.txt
Condon / Grizzly route to get homes
By CHELSI MOY of the Missoulian


Missoula County settled a lawsuit with a local developer this week, allowing a previously denied subdivision in the Swan Valley to move forward despite its intrusion into a grizzly bear corridor.

Now Swan Valley resident Karin Stolp can build Homestead Estates, albeit with some changes.

The county commissioners denied Stolp's 152-acre, four-lot subdivision two miles northeast of Condon in 2006 because of its location inside a sensitive wildlife area.
As part of the compromise, the county required the developer move the homesite on one 40-acre lot to a less sensitive area to reduce the impacts to grizzlies moving from the Swan Range to the Mission Mountains.

One homesite remains just inside the grizzly zone.

“It's better than what was initially proposed,” said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Servheen opposed the original subdivision design. “It's of less concern than the original proposal.”

In return, Missoula County agreed to pay Stolp $35,000 to cover the profit disparity from the land sale. Stolp argued the move devalued the land.

Obviously the county would prefer if no houses were built inside the grizzly corridor, said Commissioner Jean Curtiss, but that was difficult with the terrain restrictions in the less-sensitive areas of the property.

“It was a good compromise on both parts,” she said. “All the easy places have been developed already. Hopefully in the future we can negotiate in the subdivision review process rather than in the courts.”

The plaintiff, too, was pleased with the results, said Stolp's attorney, Thomas Orr.

“We got the subdivision,” he said. “We are disappointed it took so long to get to that point.”

This ends a lawsuit that, several months ago, “had no end in sight,” according to District Judge Doug Harkin, who reprimanded the county in a Dec. 5 court order for failing to offer “even meritless objections” in the case.

Because of the county's inaction, Harkin was prepared to allow the subdivision to move forward as originally proposed. County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg successfully argued that by trying to punish the county, the judge could unintentionally harm an endangered species.

In agreeing to hear the facts of the case, Harkin opened up the possibility of a settlement. Had the case gone to trial, both sides are confident an expensive appeals process would have followed.

“From the beginning (my clients) believed what they were doing was environmentally responsible and compliant with the growth plan,” Orr said.

The county paid $4,200 of Stolp's attorney's fees for its delayed response in the case. Orr acknowledged the county responded in a timely matter after the court brought its inattentiveness to light.

So, who would buy a home if the home sits inside a grizzly corridor?

“My clients have never seen a grizzly bear on their property and they've never had any problems,” Orr said. “The linkage zones don't reflect where the bears go. The bears are all over the place in the Swan.”

Scientists identified these grizzly corridors more than a decade ago, Servheen said. Directing development to places outside these areas maintains the opportunity for wildlife movement, he said.

The $35,000 Missoula County must pay to Stolp comes from the county's liability pool. The county sets aside anywhere from $225,000 to $500,000 each fiscal year to cover costs such as payments in lawsuits, damages to a sheriff's patrol vehicle or if an employee were to drop a computer.

Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at chelsi.moy@missoulian.com

[houndcrazyfool]

As hunters we need to help preserve the lands so our future has the same privledges as we have had. I can pick out good and bad from both sides. People need to realize that builing homes in semi-remote areas outside of town is just hurting our natural ecosystem. And the scientist need to give a little thought to the natural pace of evolution. In most cases we as man are at fault when it comes to destroying are great wildlife areas but occasionally i think some of these biologist are trying to save a species that is at the end of their evolution process(death).

[cecil j.]

this is not from a hunting perspective, but it explains a lot about a plan to connect wild areas in southern California to help wildlife, and the thinking behind it. The people considered "experts" here may not be to our taste, but it is interesting reading.
from the San Diego Union-Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/scie ... 0wild.html
there are a lot of pix and maps if you click on the link
Local wilderness corridors help species avoid isolation and extinction

By Mike Lee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 20, 2008
To most passers-by, the vast valley that drains into Lake Henshaw offers little more than a scenic diversion on the way to Julian.

JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
A view to the east from Cuyamaca shows the San Felipe Valley, a key wildlife pathway.
But to wildlife scientists, it's one of the 15 critical wildlife corridors left in Southern California because it connects Palomar Mountain and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

Yesterday, after six years of work, South Coast Wildlands and about 20 partner groups released the most comprehensive assessment ever done of the region's habitat links and created what is likely to be a national model for conservation planning.

Graphic:

Southern California
wildlife links (PDF)
“This really is the leading edge,” said Paul Beier, a co-author of the linkages document and a conservation biologist at Northern Arizona University. “We have done a great job of making a scientifically rigorous assessment (of) what lands will best serve the needs of all native species.”

Using geographic information systems and more than 60 academic studies, the South Coast Missing Linkages Project offers detailed maps of the pathways that connect the large patches of open space owned mainly by state and federal agencies. The central goal is to enhance the movement of plants and animals between segments of more than 18 million acres of protected lands.

Mountain lions are of special concern because they require large areas to roam. Researchers used radio-collar tracking studies to identify the routes the lions already use and target those lands for special protections from development.



Movable feets: These are some of the 109 “focal species” whose movements were studied by scientists mapping Southern California's wildlife corridors.
Three of the wildland linkages are in North County and three more – which have yet to be mapped in detail – cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The others stretch as far north as Bakersfield, where thin strands of habitat connect the Sierra Nevada mountains to the coastal range.

The maps are both heartening and sobering. They show that Southern California – one of the world's biodiversity hot spots – still has enough open space to support a wide range of native plants and animals. However, they also provide a reminder that if those linkages are broken, species will become isolated in smaller and smaller pockets of land.

“The exciting thing for me is that we ... can have 20 million people coexisting with intact wildlands. We haven't lost them yet,” Beier said.

Project proponents said the pathways will help agency officials and conservation leaders focus on the most important areas to safeguard. For instance, county officials are consulting the maps as they create two large-scale species conservation plans for north and east San Diego County.

The maps also can be used by the California Department of Transportation to locate places where improvements such as bridges and stream culverts could be designed to help the movement of wildlife. In addition, the maps support conservation leaders' long-standing vision of a “vegetated land bridge” over Interstate 15 near Fallbrook as a way to facilitate migrations for mountain lions and other species.

The pathways are taking on increasing significance as global warming alters habitats.

“As we protect these linkages from the valley floor to the mountains, there will be some escape routes for species” to find suitable microclimates at higher elevations, said David Van Cleve, a senior official with The Nature Conservancy in San Diego.


JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
Conservationists hope to ensure that the Boucher Hill area of Palomar Mountain State Park stays connected to open lands to the west, including Camp Pendleton.


JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
The valley that drains into Lake Henshaw is one of 15 critical wildlife corridors identified and mapped by conservationists.


David Van Cleve of The Nature Conservancy and Kristeen Penrod of South Coast Wildlands were among experts involved in the project, which brought together about 20 partner groups.
Creating a network of conservation areas is a departure from old-school ecology, which relied heavily on government agencies such as the National Park Service setting aside huge chunks of property. That's not viewed as practical these days.

“It's much more efficient both in terms of economics and in terms of biology to create linkages between the existing reserves,” Van Cleve said.

That approach relies on cooperative agreements with private property owners. Land conservancies, working with state and federal agencies, commonly provide financial incentives for landowners to limit development or improve the habitat on their parcels.

Thanks to the linkage blueprint, that can happen in a targeted and scientifically defensible way.

The new atlas has its roots in a statewide conference eight years ago that included some 200 land managers, scientists and conservationists. They identified 232 linkages statewide – a number that was too big to tackle all at once, said Kristeen Penrod, conservation director at South Coast Wildlands, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles that coordinated the pathways project.

Making a connection
The creation of the “missing linkages” for Southern California involved five steps:

Selection of 109 focal species that represent the diverse needs of the region's plants and animals.

Analysis of elevation, vegetation, road density and other factors to define the best routes between preserved lands.

Identification of priority areas needed to maintain the links.

On-the-ground investigation of the models.

Compilation of analyses and fieldwork into final maps.

She and her colleagues whittled the number down to 15 Southern California links that “are so important that if even one fails, the biological integrity of the entire region would be compromised.”

At first, the links were nothing more than arrows on a map. But over time, conservationists have refined the corridors down to a matter of meters.

Doing that took several steps, starting with the selection of 109 “indicator species,” including black-tailed jack rabbits, badgers, golden eagles and white alder.

Next, the scientists performed what they call a “landscape permeability analysis,” a computer technique that models the difficulty that the various species would have moving between large conserved areas. Factors include vegetation types, elevation, slope and road density.


JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
Tom Oberbauer, chief of multiple species conservation planning for the county, and Mary Loquvam, executive director of South Coast Wildlands, toured areas covered by the mapping effort.
The best potential route for each species was combined with the others to create the most favorable path for all modeled plants and animals.

After that, the scientists factored in the size of habitat parcels in the pathways and whether they are close enough to benefit the species.

Researchers then checked the models during field trips and documented migration barriers such as roads.

In addition to generating maps, South Coast Wildlands and its partners offered several recommendations for how to improve the habitat connections. They include: designing road culverts to maximize wildlife use, encouraging the use of native plants by residents, enforcing leash laws on public lands to reduce predation of wildlife, and stopping illegal use of off-road vehicles.


Advertisement

Now that the South Coast report is done – at the cost of about $700,000 – Penrod and others aim to export their analytical approach.
“Let's do the rest of California at the level of detail that actually provides an implementable vision,” she said.

Miss Emily yaknow i think the world of ya, but your not liveing in southern ca. and didn`t even state if your for this bill or against it/ so here is my thinking against it for all to read.

There must be 2000 hound hunters who hunt there/ ok 2,000 hound hunten there on weekends and throught out the week and maybe 300 + hunters who own em and hunt at least 3 nights a week and in the winter hunt it day imes as well as nights. they run fox,bobcat,cyote,coon, mtn lion,bear/ I didn`t say too kill game out of season or protected from dispatch either by the law. I said persuiet with packs of hounds. Its the onlyest places these southern Ca. hunters can run dogs/ everyweres else is 6-8 lane freeways or citys ! These hunters live in little burgs and vills and they have been hunten hounds for about 100 + yrs now in southern Ca. and they pay heavely in fuiel,dog feed costs, hunten eqpt.costs,hunting licenses fee, on and on and they have a tax payers right to beable too hunt in those hills and nt to santuary it for game ! Think about it ya all ?