"Ecosystem Management: An Organizing

Principle for Land Use"

A Chapter by Douglas P. Wheeler
In
Land Use In America

By Henry L. Diamond and Patrick F. Noonan

Island Press (Covelo, California and Washington, D.C.)
1996

Every day the San Francisco Chronicle carries a small map of California that forecasts the state's probable weather conditions for the next day. On the newspaper's map, California is divided into nine climate zones. In effect, the editors have made a policy call: California's weather, they have said, is too complex to be rendered comprehensible in a simple graphic, and understanding the weather depends on the deployment of equivalently complex tools. To be useful to readers, in other words, the map must be broken down into rational components.

At the California Resources Agency, we have followed a similar logic. On our map, California is divided into 10 bioregions. This map was originally created in 1988 as a product of long deliberations among members of the state's Interagency Natural Areas Coordinating Committee (INACC). Interestingly enough, our map closely resembles other maps of the state's natural hydrology and settlement patterns dating to the mid-19th century, long before urban development projects had obscured the direct convergence between human activities and the natural order. Early settlers, heavily dependent on sustainable forests and fisheries and on subsistence agriculture, showed great respect for natural systems and lived and worked within their contours.

Despite development over the years and the imposition of superficial Subdivisions, the strength of natural systems remains evident, and the logic of their alignments compelling. Even the climate zones of the morning newspaper, which range from the cool, wet coastal forests of the far northern Klamath province to the heat of desert highlands some thousand miles away, reflect the permanence and diversity of our natural order. Thus, no matter what lines may have been superimposed, or alterations to the landscape made, we return inevitably to the enduring reality of California's bioregions as a guide to the management of natural resources, including the land itself.

The same logic may not apply in other areas of the United States. Some states are homogeneous enough to escape subdivision. Other states are small enough to be considered as components of multistate regions. Still more complicated are those particularly grand theaters of biological clustering-usually large watersheds, mountain ranges, basins, and estuaries-that imprint themselves on multiple states and sprawl across time and climate zones. Common to many logics organized around biology and landforms, however, is a disregard of jurisdictional boundaries. The cunning and inexorable logic of nature seldom complies with the arbitrary and compromising logic of politics.

BACKGROUND

In California, we are still in the experimental stage of working with this new organizing principle of ecosystem management. Not long after I was appointed California's seventh secretary for resources by newly elected Governor Pete Wilson in 1991, with broad resources management responsibilities at the state level, not unlike those of the U.S. secretary of the interior, I was approached by a coalition of state and federal land managers with an appealing organizational concept. Why not, they argued, agree to pursue our disparate responsibilities-whether emanating from Sacramento or Washington-in a more coordinated manner and, at the same time, along bioregional lines.

The leader of this visionary cabal was an unlikely revolutionary. Ed Hastey had long been state director in California for the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and, in developing programs for multiple use of BLM's vast California acreage, did not always enjoy the support of environmental activists. Ed was nonetheless a canny public land manager who had become increasingly frustrated with overlap among state and federal agencies, lack of clear direction, paucity of valid resource data, and the resulting failure by all concerned to achieve effective land use policies.

To his credit, this "Viceroy of California," as Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt describes him, had earlier experimented with Coordinated Resource Management Plans (CRMPS) in areas with large BLM ownership. But time was running out for California, whose population had doubled since the mid-1960's for Ed Hastey, who was nearing the end of a long career in public service. Ed proposed, and I-perhaps too readily-agreed, that we should embrace the deceptively simple idea of fostering regional efforts to promote the conservation of biodiversity and to encourage compatible economic development.

Following execution of a memorandum of understanding (MOU), we created the California Executive Council on Biological Diversity (now the California Biodiversity Council), a collaborative body of more than two dozen representatives drawn from the following: state agencies responsible for land, wildlife, water, parks, agriculture, fish, and forests; the University of California; local governments, conservation districts, and associations; and the federal departments that, collectively, manage half of the state's lands. In its first act, the new council adopted the bioregional map as a basis for coordinating activities.

Invariably, such developments have their origins in earlier events and are built on those sturdy foundations. Although the Biodiversity Council has adopted the INACC map, with its 10 bioregions, there are other ways in which to draw defensible boundaries. In her book An Island Called California, published more than 25 years ago, Elna Bakker identified 11 bioregional communities in California.

To be sure, not all of the state's relevant departments have been reorganized along bloregional lines, but we have made especially significant progress within the Resources Agency itself. We have given emphasis to conservation of biodiversity in pursuing the individual missions of the agency's Parks and Recreation, Forestry and Fire Protection, and Fish and Game Departments.

Although to the signatories of the MOU seemingly benign, these concepts of "biodiversity" and "bioregional planning" were not at first well understood or widely accepted by the private sector, At the "Sierra Summit," which I had convened in the fall of 1991 to discuss bloregional planning as a possible solution to resource management conflicts in the Sierra Nevada, representatives of timber and mining companies, some resort operators, and local officials all voiced concern that our MOU contemplated an extension of land use regulation, or the imposition of regional government, or both. Pickets appeared at a series of workshops in small mountain communities, with placards warning of a "Wilson-Wheeler Land Grab" and newly minted buttons with the now-familiar diagonal slash superimposed on the word " biodiversity. " Nor were the protesters placated by assurances that state and federal officials only sought to coordinate activities and share information. Those who objected to wasteful, duplicative, and overzealous government were in no way Relieved to learn that the MOU was intended to make government more effective.

Ultimately, the principles of our MOU were embraced by additional agencies and, most important, by all of the counties in the state. As a result, we are able to address various problems with an equally various array of skills and instruments. The Council on Biodiversity, which meets quarterly, has become the most important statewide forum of its kind, providing a showcase for grassroots activity in every bioregion and assuring the active engagement of federal, state, and county agencies. Although we had originally planned for the establishment of regional council, local organizations concerned with the conservation of biodiversity, including many grassroots groups focused on watersheds, have argued against the interposition of a regional structure per se, much as landowners had expressed their opposition to regional governance. Thus, in each of our bioregions, we have a variety of initiatives going on. They are all different, for each is designed to respond in a tailored way to the givens of the biology and the land in each specific region. Some initiatives are more advanced than others: those in the South Coast and the Bay-Delta bioregions lead the way.

In Southern California's five-county, 6,000-square-mile region, the Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) program, designed to protect the state's remaining coastal sage scrub habitat-home of the California gnatcatcher, a threatened species of bird, and numerous other imperiled species-is the flagship of our experiments. Although our early success in the South Coast region points toward a new way of thinking about the land and its uses, we are aware of our debt to others who have gone before. A regional approach to the protection of San Francisco Bay dates back to i965. In 1975, a private task force that studied land use practices throughout the state published The California Land: Planning for People, a seminal report identifying problems that are today even more acute. Creation of the State Coastal Conservancy in 1976 provided a model for dealing unconventionally and simultaneously with environmental, economic, and social issues, especially those that cross jurisdictional boundaries and require imaginative solutions.

Despite the success of these early efforts, there remains an urgent need to protect California's extraordinary natural legacy. In The Diversity of Life, famed Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson puts our task in its largest perspective: "It is reckless to suppose that biodiversity can be diminished indefinitely without threatening humanity itself." Californians have long acknowledged that existing mechanisms are inadequate to safeguard this legacy in the face of mounting population and development pressures. Writing about California's biodiversity in Living on the Edge, a new resource guide edited by Carl Thelander, Raymond Dasmann observes that "the view of the natural world as a place to live, and therefore to care for, has not held its own against the view of nature as something to exploit. We have reached our present dilemma: Now we must balance the need to protect and maintain what is left of California's once-renowned biodiversity against the need to care for the well-being of its human population."

Population pressure dwarfs and compounds all other problems. California's population, now 32 million, is expected to approach 6o million before the middle of the next century, but the state's explosive growth has already squeezed the range of policy options and pushed many alternatives to the margins. Population has grown so swiftly that even the projections found in The California Land, thought to be extreme in 1975, have been outpaced. More recently, both the private sector Bank of America and the public sector Department of Water Resources have studied our population growth and come to the same conclusion: It is simply imperative that we quickly find proper mechanisms for the optimal distribution of our burgeoning population. The sustainability of our economy and our resources hangs in the balance. Our landscapes can no longer support uncoordinated and haphazard settlement patterns.

In its recently released assessment of the cost of sprawl, Beyond Sprawl: New Patterns of Growth to Fit the New California, the Bank of America concludes that "we can no longer afford the luxury of sprawl. Our demographics are shifting in dramatic ways. Our economy is restructuring. Our environment is under increasing stress. We cannot shape California's future successfully unless we move beyond sprawl."

To stand on the flat bluffs overlooking the seaward reaches of the San Dieguito River Park, as I did recently, is to be overwhelmed by an undeniable truth-the relentless power behind the human drive to occupy and master a landscape. To the north toward Escondido and to the south toward San Diego, and packed within five miles of the Pacific Ocean, ties an extraordinary array of human enterprises, each jostling the other within severe limits of space, each competing with the other to claim a place. In the hurly-burly of such vigorous human activity, the San Dieguito valley the only greensward to be seen in this vista-looks painfully vulnerable and lonely, its protected status notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, this vista carries metaphorical overtones, for much of California's natural bounty, its unsurpassed inheritance of biological treasures, is already at risk. Scientists have estimated-or underestimated, to be more precise -that at least 33 species or subspecies of animals and 30 species of plants have already been extinguished as a direct consequence of habitat conversion or degradation. Of the 47 major habitats and 380 distinct natural communities that blanket California's I ands, only a few retain their original characteristics, and virtually all have been fragmented into small remnants.

The quality of basic information on biological resources remains spotty. To initiate the NCCP process on a sound factual footing, conservation biologists first had to gather missing data. In both i992 and 1993, for example, the scientists literally were compelled to count individual birds. Under emergency pressures, they also had to determine the minimal size of viable habitats for selected species. This discovery of the inadequacy of existing data has led to the development of a large, computerized database, the California Environmental Resources Evaluation System (CERES), at the Resources Agency. CERES compiles critical information on our state's resources from a variety of sources and makes this database more readily accessible along the "Information superhighway" to those who need it most.

CERES has been built on earlier efforts to compile resource data, including The Nature Conservancy's natural heritage inventory. The Nature Conservancy, meanwhile, has also identified the loss of habitat as a critical problem for California. Most of our forests have gone through multiple logging cycles, with unknown, but certainly significant, impacts on biodiversity. Grasslands have been converted to large-scale agricultural operations, heavily grazed by domesticated livestock, and occupied by exotic species. At least go percent of the state's wetlands have been drained. Numerous rivers and streams have been dammed, channeled, and diverted, with their waters-called "liquid gold" in California-serving the immediate demands of agriculture and sprawling metropolitan populations, often at the long-term expense of fish and other biota dependent on steady and abundant supplies of freshwater. And in the coastal scrub habitats of Southern California, location of the five-county NCCP planning, residential subdivisions, shopping malls, transportation facilities, and other human interventions have brought natural systems to the threshold of disintegration.

NEW PARTNERSHIPS

The NCCP program, our pioneering effort in the South Coast bioregion, was recently called "the nation's most ambitious and remarkable application of biodiversity conservation." Our motivations are, in fact, quite simple: California wants to save exposed habitats and ecosystems and to slice through the Gordian knot of legal, political, and social paralysis. All of my experience in this arena, whether in the Resources Agency, World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, American Farmland Trust, or the U.S. Department of the Interior, suggests that private landowners and environmentalists alike want a measure of certainty above all else as they pursue their various objectives.

In seeking to provide greater certainty, we could not have tackled a more challenging site for our experiment than the South Coast. Never before has a large-scale program combined resource protection and development objectives in such an urbanized context. Nor has any program so extensively attempted to find common ground and rational process between the conflicting requirements of state and local missions for economic development and land management and the environmental mandates of federal legislation, epitomized by the Endangered Species Act.

In early April of 1991, Governor Pete Wilson took advantage of the annual Earth Day celebrations to announce his support of a range of initiatives that are designed to allow state officials to become more anticipatory and less reactive in their responses to pending resource problems. Included in the Governor's announcement of "Resourceful California" was our cherished experiment in new partnerships. What is needed, he said then, is a means by which "to protect endangered species and their habitat through a process of consultation rather than confrontation." His approval of specific statutory authority (AB--2072) for the NCCP enabled the California Department of Fish and Game to begin the evolution of this still embryonic program. Instead of focusing on the protection of a single species at a time, as traditionally occurs, the new NCCP process would try to conserve entire habitats and ecosystems encompassing numerous species. The one-by-one listing of a single species freights each listing with too much baggage. The new approach allows us to step back and gaze across wider horizons and longer time scales.

No one person is more deserving of credit for the early success of NCCP than Michael A. Mantell, undersecretary of the California Resources Agency. Both Michael and I came to the NCCP from World Wildlife Fund in Washington, where we had been exposed to E.O. Wilson's pioneering work and efforts to achieve sustainability in rapidly developing regions outside the United States. When Governor Pete Wilson challenged us to resolve the endangered species conundrum of Southern California, Michael thought to apply at home the concepts of bloregional planning and ecosystem management that had already proved useful in developing countries.

I came to the problem from a different perspective. As a fledgling at the Department of the Interior, I had helped write that portion of President Nixon's environmental program that was adopted in 1973 as the Endangered Species Act. I knew that misapplication of the act had caused the paralysis about which developers and environmentalists alike complained in Southern California and that ecosystem management could be useful in resolving that impasse-and others like it. More important, our approach could bring broader protection to the California gnatcatcher and associated denizens of the coastal sage scrub than was provided by either the federal or state endangered species laws. Both Michael and I knew that NCCP had achieved the desired degree of name recognition," despite its alliterative weakness, when we were greeted in San Diego with placards that read "New Cover-up for Corporate Polluters (NCCP)."

As of late 1995, tills unique convergence of environmental and economic interests had already survived a series of hurdles. Each success, it should be emphasized, grew out of an unprecedented degree of trust among the various stakeholders.

First, we invited hard science to move into the very center of our process. We created an independent review panel of five nationally recognized conservation biologists, headed by Dr. Dennis Murphy at Stanford University, to evaluate data, prescribe standards for the collection of additional information in the field, and recommend guidelines for integrating the biological sciences into future planning efforts.

We had hoped, as part of our campaign to maintain the integrity of the NCCP process and the incentives for collaboration, to avoid listing the gnatcatcher as threatened or endangered. But Secretary Bruce Babbitt of the U.S. Interior Department ignored our plea and decided to list, while granting a special rule, under Section 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act, that recognizes the NCCP, including its 32 participating private landowners, as a legitimate player in the land use drama. Secretary Babbitt had understood our dilemma and offered Section 4(d) as an incentive for developers to stay in the program. Specifically, the new rule allows partners who agree to produce a plan that protects coastal sage scrub to develop up to 5 percent of the habitat and receive authorization for an "incidental take" of the threatened California gnatcatcher during the planning process. The announcement of the special rule represented an important step in making the federal government a full partner in a cooperative ecosystem management program and provided further incentive for the continued participation of landowners who might have otherwise walked away when the gnatcatcher was listed.

The California Department of Fish and Game's NCCP Process and Conservation Guidelines were completed in late 1993 and merged into the special Section 4(d) rule. The process guidelines constitute "the rules of the game" and provide guidance for interactions among stakeholders. The conservation guidelines, based on the findings of the scientists' review panel, prescribe the outline of each plan, thus rendering subsequent evaluation, approval, and implementation more rational and certain. These two complementary documents constitute a blueprint for the immediate development of 10 subregional preserves in Southern California and the eventual spread of the model throughout the state. Furthermore, in an unusual display of coordination and collaboration, the state Fish and Game Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed an MOU that eliminates the redundancy of parallel regulatory requirements.

Meanwhile, the inevitable urge to turn to the courts for relief has been tempered. There were challenges to both the March 1993 listing of the California gnatcatcher as a threatened species and to Secretary Babbitt's novel application of the Section 4(d) rule. Private landowners initially succeeded in getting the four-inch bird delisted, but the listing was temporarily reinstated pending public review of scientific research that had buttressed the original listing. As of this writing, the final ruling is still not known. Nor have the courts taken up a lawsuit filed by environmental groups that challenges the U.S. Interior Department's decision to postpone the designation of critical habitat for our tiny bird. Fortunately, the chilling possibility of continuing the business-as-usual uncertainty in the courts has actually sharpened interest in NCCP as a safe harbor. Developers, in particular, have reaffirmed their commitment to the NCCP program. In short, the common interest of all parties in multispecies, ecosystemic planning has been underlined, and court actions have, so far, left the process undamaged.

Finally, it should be noted that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service eased local concerns by issuing a set of "assurances" in August 1994. In effect, these pronouncements tell nonfederal landowners with approved multispecies plans that they will not be subjected to further land use restrictions or mitigation requirements if additional species are listed or other regulatory action required. The progress of the NCCP program in Southern California was explicitly cited as the justification for Secretary Babbitt's pronouncement that "a deal is a deal."

APPROVALS AND APPROPRIATIONS

Now comes the hard part: approving applications for preserves and finding funds for land acquisitions whenever acquisition is required to assure the integrity of the subregional preserves.

As of this writing, the parties are close to complex agreements on a variety of subregional plans-the very heart of the NCCP program. Since I the Section 4(d) rule took effect, some 30 projects in San Diego County and 8 in Orange County have either received final approval by wildlife agencies or are close to being approved for consistency with preserve guidelines. More than three dozen other projects are also in advanced stages of review in those counties, even as more comprehensive, long-term preserve plans are being designed.

Meanwhile, interested stakeholders recently initiated a long-term planning process in San Bernardino County, and an agreement was recently reached with Riverside County to have its multispecies planning effort meet NCCP requirements. Each county plan will encompass thousands of acres and embrace many cities and partners. Even Los Angeles County, long recognized around the world as a metaphor for problems associated with urban sprawl, will protect several thousand acres of its remaining coastal sage scrub habitat on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Nevertheless, it is to San Diego and Orange counties that we turn to taste the true ingredients of success. In these counties, the nuances of the NCCP process are revealed in all their complexity.

In San Diego County, where 4,2.00 square miles are home to 24 plant and animal species listed or proposed as threatened or endangered and another 300 considered vulnerable, three subregional plans are being developed. The Multi-Species Conservation Program, encompassing almost 580,000 acres in the city of San Diego and southwestern San Diego County, stands out as one of the largest, most ambitions, and most complex of all regional plans in the United States. This program, which affects a great variety of interacting species and habitats and is anchored in the city's Clean Water Program, involves no fewer than it cities, adjacent lands in the county, and a system of corridors connecting diverse preserves. The North County Multiple Habitat Conservation Program, organized by SANDAG, the regional consortium of governments, covers 610,000 acres in to of the county's northernmost jurisdictions. The third plan, covering over 1,000,000 acres of land in the eastern two-thirds of the region, mostly owned by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management and the county's park and recreation department, is intended to complement the other two by establishing both a wildlife corridor system and a desired degree of "connectivity" among all three.

In Orange County, there are two plans in the works that cover approximately 340,000 acres. The Southern Orange County NCCP is noteworthy because this subregion includes large sections of coastal sage scrub habitat that are still relatively undeveloped, including lands reserved until now for military uses.

In fact, we are willing to engage, as partners, any entity with holdings that include eligible lands, whatever the entity's official status: the military, as noted, and other federal agencies, including such exotic ones as the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC); private corporations, owners of individual parcels, and, especially, developers; nonprofit groups, trusts, foundations, and conservancies; and, of course, other organs of state and local government. The California Department of Parks and Recreation, for example, has signed an agreement with the Fish and Game Department, the NCCP manager, to help identify, evaluate, and enroll appropriate state parklands in the program. So far, six park sites are enrolled. Similarly, the U.S. Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management has made 176,000 acres within San Diego County available for conservation planning. Land assets once held by failed savings and loan associations and now being redistributed by the RTC are being evaluated for their habitat potential and possible inclusion in the NCCP program. To relieve the burden on private landowners, we have given priority to the inclusion of public lands whenever they meet eligibility criteria.

Similarly, our funding for research, administration, and acquisitions must come from multiple sources. The financial resources of the state and federal governments are simply insufficient for underwriting the multiple requirements of an effective NCCP program.

For example, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports natural resource partnerships throughout the nation, has Supplemented federal funding with matching donations. The federal government has contributed $ 2 million for planning, and Secretary Babbitt has pledged support for continuing efforts in the five-county NCCP region. The city of San Diego has spent another $3 million. Local governments in San Diego and Orange counties are providing staff time and technical advice.

California's financial plight, however, is not a well-kept secret. The state is just recovering from a deep and traumatic recession. Steeply rising medical and welfare costs leave little margin for discretionary Spending. Governor Wilson estimates that unfunded federal mandates alone cost the state about $8 billion annually. More than two-thirds of California's counties are currently insolvent. Opportunities to increase property taxes are severely limited. Bond measures are difficult to justify in the current political climate: California's voters rejected a $ 2 billion bond issue for parks and wildlife as recently as June 1994. And, in a rare instance of true bipartisanship, the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations have all withheld funds from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, formerly a prime source of funding for states wishing to purchase wildlife habitat.

Clearly, it is time to be creative. Secretary Babbitt displayed such creativity in December 1994 when he announced to the quarterly meeting of the California Biodiversity Council in San Diego that he would provide federal funds to assist NCCPs through a previously ignored provision, Section 6, of the Endangered Species Act. And the state has done its share by funding the start-up of NCCP and authorizing the establishment of Habitat Assessment Districts, through which local governments can generate revenue to acquire habitat.

On the state and local levels, it may also be feasible to acquire less than fee interests-including development rights-as an alternative to outright acquisition. The state has promulgated guidelines and has encouraged consideration of tax credits, increased reliance on publicly owned lands, and broadened incentives like California's Williamson Act for owners to participate in voluntary habitat stewardship.

Another possibility involves using funds from such programs as the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 to mitigate for transportation projects that have had adverse impacts on the land and biological resources. A small proportion of the $ 1.6 billion in federal funds provided under the Conservation Reserve Program, part of the i985 federal Farm Bill, might also be made available to help property owners with ecologically valuable lands become willing stewards of their holdings, much as the Wetlands Reserve Program has encouraged protection of that ecotype.

REPLICATING THE MODEL

The success of the NCCP program in Southern California, admittedly qualified and fragile, has encouraged us to transport the model to other bioregions in the state and adapt its underlying principles and processes to different sets of circumstances. Not without a touch of foolhardiness, we have dared to apply the model to the most intractable problem of all-the sharing of the limited resources that meet in the delta formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers above San Francisco Bay. This has been a war zone for decades, and the battles have been fought over water. What land-based development is to the South Coast bioregion, water diversions are to the Bay-Delta bioregion.

The 1,600-square-mile estuary in the Bay-Delta ecosystem abounds in biodiversity. It is home to some 400 species of fish, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and birds, including half the shorebirds and waterfowl that migrate on the Pacific Flyway. Two-thirds of California's salmon swim through the estuary each year, including the endangered winter-run chinook. The threatened Delta smelt also swims these waters.

Unfortunately, California has a semiarid climate. Its waters-most of which, if left untamed, would flow freely through the estuary-are also needed to irrigate the nation's largest and most productive agricultural industry and to slake the household thirsts of the populous south. Most of these waters begin ii-4 snow in the Sierra Nevada. Before the melted runoff reaches San Francisco Bay, however, it moves through a dauntingly complex network of dams, waterways, pumps, and canals that supply gigantic water systems managed by both the state and the federal governments. Virtually every individual in California, not to mention every economic interest, is affected by the management of these systems.

The latest round of battles began almost a decade ago. In 1986, a state judge ordered a new balancing of the region's resources. In 1987, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), applying the standards of the federal Clean Water Act, declared the state's water quality too poor to sustain the region's biota. Over the next few years, numerous plans were proposed and rejected for one contentious reason or another. Finally, a newly elected Governor Wilson decided to make the ending of the water wars a matter of high priority. In 1992, he directed a new Water Policy Council to find solutions that would ensure adequate water quality, allow efficient and reliable water exports, fulfill the requirements of fish and wildlife, and protect the integrity of the region's maze of channels and levees. I was joined on the council by representatives of various state agencies that deal with water, natural resources, agriculture, and commerce. The governor also directed the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt interim water quality standards, and he created the Bay-Delta Oversight Council, a panel of citizens representing water users and environmental groups that would help design long-term solutions.

Early in 1993, while the state was working on interim standards, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued regulations, pursuant to the requirements of the Endangered Species Act, to protect the winter-run chinook, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Delta smelt as threatened. Both actions implied large, additional diversions of water away from other uses. The state was forced to focus immediately on long-term solutions that reflected the needs of an entire ecosystem.

In September 1993, the four responsible federal agencies involved in the issue responded to the state's frustrations by forming the Federal Ecosystem Directorate (known a bit derisively as "Club Fed") to coordinate their management responsibilities across Jurisdictional lines. This step opened the door to an unprecedented degree of cooperation between state and federal officials.

In June 1994, only six months before a court-imposed deadline for EPA to issue final water quality standards, a framework agreement was signed by ii z federal and state agencies with responsibilities for managing water quality, fish and wildlife, and the principal conveyance systems. In essence, the new agreement was a declaration of interdependence. In the new spirit of cooperation, both sides moved quickly toward the achievement of mutual goals for regulatory certainty, long-term environmental protection, and predictable water supplies. Club FED and the Water Policy Council, for example, worked together to establish a seasonal supply regime for the two vast storage and delivery systems that traverse California and to stabilize the natural systems of the estuary.

The basic story line here is short and simple: In the beginning, complexity reigned; paralysis and uncertainty were the results; gradually, however, a cooperative spirit began to emerge; enthusiasm mounted as solutions became evident. The story, of course, is still unfolding, with the final chapter only now being written and edited. Nevertheless, the state's water users are already pleased with the plot. They simply want an end to the uncertainty of fragmented, piecemeal management. Like the policy makers in state and federal agencies and the chiefs of the operating water projects, they seek practical resolutions for long-standing conflicts that will avoid the drastic consequences of direct collisions with the Endangered Species Act.

On December 15, 1994, all of this hard work snapped into sharp focus. California and the U.S. government signed an agreement that will, for the first time, allow state officials to manage ecosystems as whole entities rather than regulate one industry, one resource, and one species at a time.

The new arrangement establishes limits on how much freshwater can be diverted from the estuary to agricultural and urban areas, thereby supplying our endangered fish species with enough stream flows to survive annual migrations and to keep salty intrusions at bay. Although farmers and city dwellers will sacrifice part of their current allotments, their compensation will take shape as an absolute guarantee of delivery. In relinquishing about 10 percent, some 400,000 acre-feet, of their current draw in normal years, they are, in effect, trading water for certainty.

Indeed, the guarantee-and, in particular, its application during drought years-was the final domino to fall into place. At virtually the last moment before the court-ordered deadline, Secretary Babbitt agreed to have the federal government underwrite the costs of supplying additional water, should it become needed due to unforeseen circumstances, beyond that which has been contributed by the state's water users.

As we sought to bring government processes more nearly into conformity with natural systems, our experiences in the South Coast and Bay-Delta bioregions also revealed the emergence of a new "institutional ecosystem," the shape of which should influence further efforts to balance economic and environmental objectives. First of all, we have learned to tackle complex environmental issues on a scale suited to their solution. Although the scale of workable solutions to the habitat crisis of Southern California and the conflicts of water use in the Bay-Delta estuary are necessarily broad-in both instances nearly as broad as the bioregions themselves-the tenets of integrated resource management are applicable in smaller settings as well.

The Council on Biodiversity has compiled a long list of watershed subgroups in the Klamath and Sierra Nevada bioregions, each of which is an avid practitioner of ecosystem management. It is critically important to involve all stakeholders, no matter how checkered the history of earlier relationships. Until all parties acknowledge the legitimacy of one another's objectives, and agree to collaborate on the problem-solving exercise, no real progress can be expected. In fact, the role of government then becomes secondary, as the truly interested parties seek an alternative to continuing-and wasteful-controversy.

Just as the gnatcatcher in the South Coast and the Delta smelt in the Bay Delta have served to galvanize this new "Institutional ecosystem" in their bioregions, the northern spotted owl has had a similar effect in far northern California. Although not everyone, including the state of California, approves the federal government's "Option 9 " prescription for management of national forests in the Klamath province, we do recognize that it reflects a new commitment to ecosystem management. Equally important, the program has included a Community Economic Revitalization Team, whose members are making funds available to promote sustainable development in the bioregion. The federal and state governments are also cooperating to improve resources planning in yet another of California's bioregions, the Sierra Nevada. Following the Sierra Summit, Congress authorized an ecosystem study of the Sierra Nevada by the U.S. Forest Service. The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project is the first of its kind and is intended to offer management strategies that integrate economic and environmental objectives. A report of its findings Is due at the end of 1995. It is difficult to overstate the significance of business participation in this effort, and with it the articulation of economic, as well as environmental, costs and benefits.

In each instance, we sought to engage the entire suite of stakeholders, whether public or private. But there also emerged an unanticipated interest on the part of the general business community, which has come increasingly to understand the connection between economic growth and environmental protection.

The landowners of Southern California were, of course, directly affected by the outcome and were, thus, essential participants in development of the plan. The role of business in finding agreement over water quality standards for the Bay-Delta bioregion was not so well defined at first. The usual combatants in California's water wars-agriculture, urban users, and environmentalists-welcomed business to their ranks when a formidable array of corporate leaders reminded President Clinton and Governor Wilson that continued disagreement, and the resulting uncertainty of water supply, would have seriously adverse consequences for the state's economy as a whole. just prior to the December 15, 1994) agreement between California and the U.S. government, the California Business Roundtable urged compromise in the interest of economic recovery: "Moving beyond gridlock and reaching a compromise on water is critical to sustaining the economic recovery underway in the state. We implore you to do everything in your power to ensure that the goal (of satisfactory water-quality standards) is achieved."

Because its credibility is derived from scientific theory, ecosystem management can succeed only when sustained by sound, or at least defensible, science. As noted above, it was recognized from the beginning that NCCP could not succeed unless well grounded in conservation biology. Even when there are inadequate data, or genuine disagreement among scientists, as in the case of the enormously complex Bay-Delta estuary, agreement can be found within the "range of reasonable science," subject to modification as new information becomes available. The establishment of protocols for extensive monitoring in the Bay-Delta estuary is an essential element of the December i5 agreement. Despite legitimate disagreements among scientists about the likely effects of new water quality standards, it will be readily possible to determine whether the desired result has been achieved and to modify the water quality regime as necessary. As we learn more about the functioning of ecosystems, we will rely less on rigid prescriptions and more on adaptive management of their component parts.

MANAGING COMPLEXITY

Although I believe that we are well served by these principles, and by the larger shift toward bioregional planning, I am laboring under no illusions that would lead me into declaring that the state of California has suddenly decided to launch a direct attack on the problems of land use and growth management. Indeed, there has been virtually no response to the comprehensive recommendations of the Governor's Council on Growth Management, published in I993. In Strategic Growth: Taking Charge of the Future, A Blueprint for California, we attempted to examine all elements of the state's physical infrastructure, including housing, transportation, energy, and municipal facilities in light of California's rapid growth.

Not surprisingly, the council concluded quite cautiously that regional planning "of some sort" and "in some circumstances" would be required to deal with issues that transcend the fixed boundaries of political subdivisions. As we discussed the relevance of "airsheds" and "commutersheds" and even "milksheds," I wondered aloud to my. colleagues whether we had come full circle, to the acceptance of watersheds-or even bioregions-as the organizing principle for growth management in 21st century California. The popularity of E.O. Wilson notwithstanding, my suggestion was dismissed, and our final report contained only passing reference to ecosystem management.

The indifference to conventional growth management is even more inexplicable. When I challenged a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to explain the absence of public and political support for growth management, John R. Christiansen identified, among other reasons, "the lack of a clearly focused intellectual framework." Until this framework is established, perhaps as the result of renewed interest by the business community in the economic implications of unplanned growth, California like many other places will continue to approach growth management in an incremental manner, using the tools at hand. Thus, our efforts at bioregional planning would more accurately be described as a policy of loose and indirect containment for the somewhat limited purpose of protecting biological diversity. In effect, we surround our problems with a complex weave of flexible limits and variable inducements. At one and the same time, we work a problem top down, bottom up, and side out. We nudge the problems into a framework with edges that are both fuzzy and real. But within that framework, we leave the interested stakeholders with plenty of room to innovate. We try to still the big sticks-the Endangered Species Act and the water quality standards of the Clean Water Act, for example-while we negotiate solutions that rely instead on incentives, trade-offs, cooperation, scientific reality, and regulatory certainty.

It should be evident by now that we are sailing toward the far shores of a new world of governance. The familiar universe of prescriptive policies no longer obtains. The crisp efficiencies of command-and-control hierarchies are increasingly irrelevant.

We have found in ecosystem management a means corresponding closely to the logic of natural functions by which to protect those systems, and to foster compatible human activity. We have also developed a new kind of "Institutional ecosystem" by which our environmental and economic objectives can be achieved. In acknowledging the legitimacy of these linked goals, we have opened the planning dialogue to all stakeholders and transformed the roles of government and the private sector. After 2 5 years' experience with a model that favored regulation over collaboration, and confrontation over cooperation, the parties to ecosystem management in California now demonstrate a shared commitment to sustainable use and perpetuation of our extraordinary natural legacy.

| Doug Wheeler | Calif. Resources Agency | CERES | Calif. Biodiversity Council |