Thanks, fellow citizens, for passing Proposition 40, the California Clean Water, Clean Air, Safe Neighborhood Parks, and Coastal Protection Act of 2002. Thanks for voting to clean up our water and air, protect and restore our natural environment, reinvigorate our parks, and steer development away from our spectacular scenery and valuable farmland. Thanks for passing what the Sacramento Bee called “the cleanest piece of resource legislation to emerge from the California Legislature in years.”

Here at the Coastal Conservancy we have been working for more than 25 years toward these goals. With this vote the people of the state have told us they want us to continue and have given us the financial resources to do more. We will quickly put Proposition 40 funding to use for the State’s immediate benefit. In doing so, we will also prepare a better world for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, in hopes that they will lead better lives because of the good choice Californians have made.

Proposition 40’s $2.6 billion is a small part of California’s annual budget, but it will do a tremendous amount of good. The Coastal Conservancy will receive $200 million, plus $40 million for the San Francisco Bay Area Conservancy Program—close to the $255 million we received from Proposition 12, the ballot initiative passed two years ago. That funding allowed us to catch up on needs that had built up during the lean budget years of the 1990s; this new money allows us to look to the future.

Here are some of the things we would like to do:

• Restore marshes and wetlands along all parts of California’s coast and San Francisco Bay. These tremendously productive environments are nurseries for fish and essential habitats for millions of resident and migratory birds. During the next five years we have the opportunity to protect and restore tens of thousands of acres of coastal wetlands.

• Launch a major new initiative to open more of the coast to the public. We will continue our work to complete the California Coastal Trail, the San Francisco Bay and Ridge trails, and other regional and local trails that lead to the coast. We will work to open new pathways to beaches and improve existing ones to make them accessible to everyone.

• Protect the watersheds of coastal rivers, including the majestic forests of the North Coast, the sloughs and farmland of the Central Coast, and the farmed and urbanized floodplains of the South Coast. This work will help to restore salmon, steelhead, and other fisheries, protect a variety of sensitive natural resources and farmland, and provide residents and visitors with new recreational opportunities.

• Add to parks, beaches, and other recreational lands throughout the coast and around San Francisco Bay. California is growing by more than 500,000 residents every year, and our parks are straining from the current demand.

• Revitalize urban waterfronts and piers. The tremendous commercial potential of waterfronts has been demonstrated in many of California’s cities. Lively, vigorous waterfronts benefit local economies and improve coastal residents’ quality of life.

• Protect scenic open space and farmland. We have been endowed with some of the world’s most amazing natural wonders and most valuable agricultural land. It is our duty to pass on these gifts to future generations.

The Coastal Conservancy is a relatively small agency, based in Oakland. Since our beginnings more than 25 years ago, we have depended on local leadership and citizen involvement. We will continue to look to local communities to help identify coastal needs and work with us, in partnership with other public agencies, to accomplish our mutual goals.

Proposition 40 is excellent news coming at a difficult time for the nation. It is the beginning of a story we’ll continue to bring to you in the months ahead.

—Sam Schuchat

Sam Schuchat is the executive officer of the Coastal Conservancy.

Santa Monica Mountain Canyon Lands Protected

Resource agencies have long sought to acquire Tuna Canyon, in the Santa Monica Mountains, for habitat protection and public enjoyment. The Coastal Conservancy took a major step toward that goal in January by approving $2.5 million toward the purchase of two properties comprising 1,833 acres. The total estimated value of the properties is $44.15 million. The Conservancy’s major partners in these coordinated acquisitions are the Mountains Restoration Trust, Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, State Wildlife Conservation Board, and Los Angeles County, among others.

Tuna Canyon contains a rich mosaic of habitat, with chaparral, coastal sage, oak woodlands, and a year-round stream that cascades from 1,500 feet to its outlet in Santa Monica Bay. Among the wildlife it harbors are 19 species listed as rare, threatened, or endangered. From the upper ridges, distant mountain ranges and the coastline can be seen.

To acquire the first of the two properties, 417 acres between Malibu and Topanga Canyon Boulevards at the core of the Tuna Canyon Significant Ecological Area (SEA), the Conservancy worked with the Mountains Restoration Trust and landowner John Paul DeJoria, founder and president of Paul Mitchell Hair Care Systems. DeJoria donated nearly 90 percent of the $13 million appraised value of the property. The Conservancy put up an additional $1.5 million, and the rest came from the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and the Fish and Wildlife Foundation. This key watershed and wildlife corridor is to be preserved in perpetuity.

The Conservancy also committed $1 million to help the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and Wildlife Conservation Board acquire the adjacent 1,416 acres, known as the Mann Property, in upper Tuna Canyon and adjacent Pena, Pedra Gorda, and Las Flores Canyons, which likewise includes a large part of the designated Tuna Canyon SEA. These purchases will secure a new unbroken expanse of protected land extending westward from the recently expanded Topanga State Park toward open space areas in Malibu Canyon. The proposed Coastal Slope Trail is to run through this property, with ocean views for much of its 70-mile length.

—Jack Liebster

Saving a Unique San Francisco Bay Ecosystem

In Novato, near the mouth of the Petaluma River, one can find the only blue oak woodland in California known to exist right next to a salt marsh. It survives on what is now known as the Bahia Property, a 625.5-acre patch of land nearly surrounded by publicly owned marshes. The already high value of the land has grown since the discovery of Sudden Oak Death, for no blue oaks—which cover 214 acres of hillsides on the property—have so far succumbed.

The Marin Audubon Society is determined to protect this ecosystem by acquiring the property and passing it on to public resource agencies. In January, the Coastal Conservancy chipped in $5.75 million, mostly from Proposition 12 bond funds, toward the $18 million purchase price. The Marin County Open Space District has committed $800,000, the Marin Community Foundation $200,000. Marin Audubon is seeking to raise the remainder from other public and private sources.

The acquisition of the Bahia Property would significantly expand the size, habitat complexity, and wildlife benefits of adjacent uplands and wetlands, in part through the restoration of 333 acres of diked farmland that are no longer in use. If the opportunity to protect the land is lost, residential development will destroy upland refugia for the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse and disrupt other wildlife movement between uplands and wetlands. Also lost would be an opportunity to expand a system of marsh trails related to the Petaluma River.

Marin Audubon must raise the needed dollars by August 31. The City of Novato had approved a proposal for a 424-unit residential development on the Bahia Property, but in May 2001 citizens rejected it by a 70 percent vote on a voter initiative that also prohibited submission of a new application for one year.

Marin Audubon would transfer most of the property to public agencies, including possibly the Marin County Open Space District, California Department of Fish and Game, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

—Dick Wayman

National Award to Jim King

Jim King, longtime project manager for the Coastal Conservancy, is one of seven people nationwide to receive the Environmental Law Institute’s 2002 National Wetlands Award. He was honored for his 15 years of restoration work in the Tijuana River National Estuarine Reserve, in the field of Land Stewardship and Development.

Compromise on Plan to Eradicate Killer Alga

After 18 months of attempts to eradicate Caulerpa taxifolia, at a cost of $1.3 million, the “killer alga” continues to threaten southern California coastal waters. This rapidly spreading alien seaweed was first found in Agua Hedionda Lagoon in San Diego County in the summer of 2000, and soon thereafter in Huntington Harbor in Orange County. Intense efforts by the Southern California Caulerpa Action Team (SCCAT), a partnership of federal, state, and local government agencies and other organizations, appear to be effective, but it may take up to five years of careful monitoring to be sure the threat has passed. In the Mediterranean, this strain of C. taxifolia has spread across many thousands of acres of the seafloor, smothering indigenous plants and poisoning many sea creatures.

In March the City of Carlsbad, after meetings with SCCAT and other concerned parties, proposed an interim management plan that attempts to balance the urgent need to eradicate the deadly alga with the demands of people who use the lagoon for recreation. The plan calls for closing parts of the lagoon to boaters on a rotating basis. A significant concern is that wakes and propellers of powerboats, along with fishing nets and lines, are considered largely to blame for the rapid spread of the alga in the Mediterranean. European agencies failed to take the threat seriously in its early stages, and subsequent efforts to control the alga there have failed to keep it from spreading. It is also now spreading out of control in Australian waters.

In both Agua Hedionda Lagoon and Huntington Harbor eradication efforts have consisted of covering growths of C. taxifolia with plastic tarps that are sealed to the bottom, then injecting chlorine under the tarps. This seems to work fairly well, but new growths have sprung up outside the tarps, either from tiny pieces of alga that have broken off or from new offshoots from the rootlike rhizoids that spread under bottom sediment. Treatment of two infested pools adjacent to Huntington Harbor was held up for months by heavy rains that made diving impossible.

This strain of C. taxifolia, a clone of the one devastating the Mediterranean, was probably introduced by saltwater aquarium owners dumping their tanks into waterways. Many species of Caulerpa are popular aquarium plants, and although it is now illegal to sell or transport this strain, it remains likely that it will eventually be found elsewhere in California’s coastal waters.

—HMH

Jet Ski Controversy Continues

The controversy surrounding the use of motorized personal watercraft (MPWC), commonly known as “jet skis,” in our ocean environment was first noted in Coast and Ocean in Autumn 1996 and highlighted in Winter 1997–98. By that time, environmental groups in Marin County were in the midst of fierce battle with the MPWC industry over efforts to have jet skis banned from the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS). Proponents of the ban were concerned with the crafts’ adverse impacts on the sanctuary’s unique and abundant marine life, including several species of migrating whales and birds traveling near or to the Farallon Islands. On October 10, 2001, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) formally adopted new regulations that officially banned all MPWC use within the boundaries of the GFNMS.

Today the battle has shifted to the adjacent Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, where a similar MPWC ban is being advocated. Later this year Coast and Ocean will report on this and related issues as NOAA launches its long-awaited management plan review and update for both sanctuaries. Stay tuned.

—Tim Duff