Twenty-Year Blueprint

What will we protect in the next generation?

This article originally appeared in our newsletter, Landmarks, Spring 2009

The big excitement at the Land Trust this spring was about something that seemed out of step with the times: a visionary blueprint for the conservation of our county over the next twenty years. In mid-March the Land Trust was awarded a grant to fund an 18 month long conservation planning project, by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Within a few days we were at work. The plan will combine a comprehensive scientific analysis with extensive community input to identify the highest priorities for conservation in the county.

Our goal is visionary: we want to look generations ahead and ask what we as a county want to save for the future. Certainly the vision that emerges from this process will guide the Land Trust's work for a generation. We also hope that it will help guide the work of the many other conservation organizations and partners working to protect our county's rich natural resources. And this vision of what we as a county want to protect may help us decide that we need to create a special conservation district to build the capacity necessary to turn the vision into reality.

These are audacious goals at a time when everything around us warns of caution and crisis. Last fall the Land Trust almost gave up on this kind of visionary planning. The stock market and economy were falling, as were donations that support our work. Then the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation stepped forward and agreed to fund virtually the entire planning process with a $488,000 grant. The grant was awarded in mid-March and ten days later our planning team began work.

The Process
At its core there are two parts to the process of creating a conservation vision for our county: gather together everything we know about the natural resources and the threats to them, and present that information to the public and ask them what is most important to protect. This two-part process recognizes that ultimately we as a people will protect only what is important to us. It involves educating ourselves about what's at risk and deciding among ourselves what's important to protect for future generations.

During the next six months a team of scientists and planners will be gathering the known data on our resource-rich county: on our forests and rivers and farmlands, on the places where salmon spawn and mountain lions roam and birds forage and nest, on the lands where we grow food and build roads and houses. This vast amount of information will be put on maps and in charts and in the fall we will hold a series of community workshops (funded by the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County) to share what we know – and ask you to tell us what you value. We will also be building a website loaded with information and maps.

When all this gathering, of science and community input, is done, we will go back to the drawing board to fashion a blueprint that we hope will guide conservation in our county for a generation to come.

Questions we will seek to answer
Before we gather the data and look for answers, we already know some of the issues that will come up when we look 20 years into the future of our county. How many more people will there be? The state estimates that Santa Cruz County will have 50,000 more people by 2040 – which is roughly the same as adding another city the size of Santa Cruz or Watsonville. Are there places that should be off limits for them to live and work and shop?

Which farmland is the most important to protect? What will happen in the Santa Cruz Mountains? Is the future we want there one big park? Does timber harvesting have a future in our county? Is it important to have salmon in our rivers and creeks and mountain lions roaming the mountains and hills? What will be the impact of climate change on our county?

This last question, about climate change, is one where the science is in its infancy and, like an infant, is changing almost daily. One possibility, suggested by recent modeling, is that Santa Cruz County could see more fog in the future, which would moderate the expected warming and, in turn, make our county something of a refuge for species driven from hotter places. The idea is interesting, partly because Santa Cruz County already is a refuge from the urban density just "over the hill."
We forget sometimes, until we travel "over the hill," that the Bay Area is the country's 4th largest metropolitan area. But when we are heading home, when the parking lots and eight-lane freeways give way suddenly to the dense green of our forests, we feel we are returning to our refuge, our natural oasis, our home. The question before us now is what we want that home to look like for our children and grandchildren. That is the question the Land Trust will seek to answer in the next 18 months. •

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