Map tool identifies habitats to save
Website allows citizens to pick what lands and coastal waters to protect.
Confession time: I love maps. I’m one of those people who occasionally falls down a Google Maps rabbit hole, following the path of a river to its headwaters, or exploring far-flung islands in the Pacific Ocean, or tracing the boundaries of a national park.
So with California making plans to protect 30% of its lands and coastal waters by 2030 — a final strategy report from the state’s Natural Resources Agency is due out this month — I was intrigued to learn of a new mapping tool to support that “30 by 30” goal.
The CA Nature website —
Other interactive maps show which lands and waters offer the greatest biodiversity, and how rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are expected to alter the state’s landscapes.
The Redlands-based geographic information systems company Esri built the website for state officials. I’ve found some of the maps difficult to navigate — the biodiversity and climate impact pages in particular — and several features are still being added before Earth Day this week, including an “access” tool to illustrate opportunities for more equitable access to green space.
But assuming the site gets smoothed out a bit, CA Nature is a nifty way to bring to life a conservation initiative that’s been embraced by scientists, nature advocates and governments around the world.
“We have never yet had a statewide, bird’s-eye view of all the different places across the state that are already conserved,” said Jennifer Norris, a deputy secretary at the California Natural Resources Agency. “That allows you to visualize: ‘OK, if I protect a new piece of land, how is that related to the existing protected areas? ... Is there a lot of biodiversity in this place? Could this be giving access to nature to a community that currently doesn’t have it? What’s it going to look like under future climate projections?’
“I’m also a map nerd,” she added, “and this is the kind of thing that map nerds dream about.”
President Biden has made 30 by 30 a priority through his America the Beautiful initiative. The Interior Department said last week it would distribute $375 million in ecosystem restoration funds to support 30 by 30, with other agencies chipping in $65 million and the White House targeting $1 billion in overall funding through private partnerships.
But California is ahead of the game. While federal officials are still working on a road map for how to achieve the conservation goal, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration released its own draft strategy document in December, following a series of tribal meetings and workshops collectively attended by thousands of people. Environmental activists are mostly pleased by what they’ve seen.
“California sets the bar for conservation efforts. What we hope is that the federal effort will follow, and match, the level of ambition and inclusiveness,” said Helen O’Shea, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The December report spells out nine possible pathways for protecting more of California. The pathways include government agencies acquiring lands directly; conserving private lands through voluntary “easements”; strengthening protections for wildlife and ecosystems on lands that are already publicly owned; and restoring areas that have been degraded by human activity.
None of that will be easy. While nearly a quarter of California’s land area and 16% of its ocean waters are already protected, that leaves 6 million acres of land and half a million acres of water that will need to be shielded from development over the next eight years, in a state with a desperate need for new housing and land-use planning decisions dominated by local governments.
For an example of the tension between conservation and development, look to the Mojave Desert, where local elected officials have fought efforts to protect western Joshua trees from the ravages of global warming. Solar energy developers have also argued against designating the species as threatened, even though scientists say rising temperatures pose a long-term threat.
The battle came to a head last week when state biologists recommended against protections for the western Joshua tree.
“When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the ship’s captain didn’t wait until nearly everyone on board had drowned to issue an SOS,” Brendan Cummings, conservation director of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, told The Times. “But that is essentially what state biologists are asking us to do with western Joshua trees in distress.”
That fight helps illustrate why the California Natural Resources Agency is emphasizing a bottom-up approach to 30 by 30 that involves listening to local governments and letting individual communities determine which natural spaces are worth protecting.
Still, the Newsom administration will hold itself accountable for making sure the 30% target is actually achieved by 2030, according to Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. He said state officials would provide funding and technical assistance to local groups working on conservation plans, and support the writing of regional conservation plans known as “NCCPs” that balance the need for new housing, clean energy infrastructure and other development with the protection of animals, plants and habitat.
“We’re working to cut green tape, reduce the number of hoops one has to jump through to get conservation done,” Crowfoot said.
The 30 by 30 campaign isn’t just about maintaining nature for wildlife, although that’s part of it. Conserved areas such as wetlands, grasslands and forests are vital for sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, limiting the climate damage from burning fossil fuels. They can also protect vulnerable communities from climate change consequences. Healthy coastlines, for instance, offer a buffer against rising seas and worsening floods. Urban parks can provide shaded refuge from ever-hotter heat waves.
Spending time outdoors can also improve your mental and physical health, with an article on the American Psychological Assn. website noting that exposure to nature “has been linked to a host of benefits, including improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and even upticks in empathy and cooperation.” But across the U.S., low-income people of color tend to have fewer parks in their neighborhoods, if any. Conservationists see an opportunity to fix that through 30 by 30.
O’Shea pointed toward Inglewood Oil Field as an example. Culver City and Los Angeles County officials are trying to shut down drilling and add the oil field to the surrounding Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, a popular green space in an otherwise park-poor part of town. There are plenty of obstacles, but O’Shea sees it as a good case study of a locally driven conservation plan with multiple benefits. She said the urban oil field has “tremendous habitat value” even if it needs significant restoration work.
“People look at urban areas and say there’s no habitat, there’s no biodiversity. And that’s just not the case,” she said.
O’Shea said she’s hoping for more specifics from the state on protecting freshwater ecosystems — i.e. rivers and streams — which are currently folded into the land-based 30% conservation target rather than given their own standalone plan. The state also needs to keep developing strategies to help Native American tribes reacquire and manage their ancestral lands, O’Shea said.
At the national level, meanwhile, environmentalists worry the Biden administration will count lands that are being farmed, grazed or logged as “conserved.” That’s less of an issue in California, which has adopted a strict definition of what counts as protected.
So there are reasons for optimism, conflicts to navigate and a lot of natural world still untrammeled. And 30% by 2030 may be just the beginning. The legendary biologist E.O. Wilson popularized the idea of permanently protecting 50% of planet Earth. For any of that to happen, a lot of people will need to spend a lot of time looking at maps.
“If you don’t know where something is located, you can’t protect it,” said Ryan Perkl, green infrastructure lead at Esri. “Once you have that map of those things, you can start to strategically target them.”
