The Federal Land & Water Conservation Fund is on the verge of full and permanent funding gaining over 300 cosponsors!
The great news is that CA State Proposition 12 has passed and includes the following text!
"(6) One hundred million dollars ($100,000,000), upon appropriation by the Legislature, for the purpose of funding the acquisition of real property subject to a natural community conservation plan adopted pursuant to Chapter 10 (commencing with Section 2800) of the Fish and Game Code, if the acquisition of the real property is conducted in conjunction with a natural community conservation plan approved by the Department of Fish and Game prior to January 1, 1999, or if the acquisition is approved by statute."
But they don't provide funds unless we ask for them so please contact your representatives today!!!
Santee City Council members 258-4100. Ext.#6
Members Jim Bartell, Jack Dale, Lori Howard, Hal Ryan, Randy Voepel
Prop's12 & 13 can provide millions of dollars for Fanita Ranch conservation,Town Center Park and conservation projects statewide. These funds can be matched with Land & Water Conservation Fund appropriations!
Vote YES on Prop's 12 & 13, March 7
Steve La Rue
STAFF WRITER
03-Feb-2000 Thursday
A toddler walks barefoot along the beach, one hand clasping his father's, as a movie star's comfortingly familiar voice intones, "Californians don't stand separate from the land. Our parks, beaches, rivers and mountains are more than just places to visit."
This scene and others like it will be played again and again for millions of Californians, including the San Diego County viewers of four major TV stations, for the rest of the month.
The TV ads are part of a $1 million campaign organizers say is the largest ad campaign ever for conservation in California.
It also is an ad campaign likely to benefit propositions 12 and 13 on the March 7 ballot, which would pump tens of millions of dollars into San Diego County to conserve increasingly threatened wildlife habitats, and lower the cost to county taxpayers to complete a sweeping, 172,000-acre habitat conservation program.
Proposition 12, the first parks bond issue on the state ballot since voters rejected a 1994 measure, has drawn opposition from some legislators and others who say it is too costly and deceptively named. The last successful statewide parks initiative passed in 1988.
Proposition 13 would raise $1.97 billion, mostly for water-related
environmental improvements in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. It also would allocate $40 million to preserve rural watershed lands in Southern California.
The Nature Conservancy, an international nonprofit conservation group, unveiled the ad campaign yesterday at a news conference at Mission Trails Regional Park. With 20 million new people expected to move in or be born in California over the next two decades, including 1 million more residents of San Diego County, now is the time to accelerate habitat conservation, said Bill Leahy, the conservancy's Southern California area director.
"We have got five to 10 more years and the game is over," he said. "If you think about the last coastal open spaces in San Diego County, they are going quickly. With some well directed funding now we can go a long way toward protecting the best places we have."
Daryl Thomas, administrative aide to State Sen. Ray Haynes, R-Riverside, called Proposition 12 ill conceived and a giveaway.
"There is no requirement of any kind for need," he said. "It is just
flat-out `Here is some money for you.' Is it any wonder that cities and counties favor this?"
Propositions 12 and 13 would raise $4.07 billion by selling bonds. Thestate's taxpayers would pay as much as $7 billion to retire them over 25 years, including interest costs, according to the state Secretary of State's Office...
Carol Baudler, The Nature Conservancy's director of government relations,said the ad campaign is expected to bolster public support for conservation on a broad front.
"Propositions 12 and 13 came along after we already had this program in place," she said.
"We think it is important to keep this issue on the front burner with the general public. If Propositions 12 and 13 pass, that's fine, but private contributions and local conservation actions also are expected to increase," she said.
Also backing proposition 12 are the California Chamber of Commerce and the National Audubon Society.
The $1 million cost to run the ads in California's largest media markets is being paid by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Propositions 12 and 13 would raise $2.1 billion and $1.97 billion, respectively, and would be expected to accelerate a regional wildlife preservation program intended to create a 172,000-acre habitat preserve in San Diego County.
Exact cash allotments to counties and cities are not known because local governments would compete for slices of several revenue pies.
But one program seems like a sure bet. Proposition 12 would allocate $100 million to buy habitat lands for conservation programs approved under the state's Natural Communities Conservation Program.
There are only four such programs in the state, and three of them are in San Diego County, including the 172,000-acre Multiple Species Conservation Program. "There would be about $88 million for the city and county of San Diego to share," said Tom Story, deputy director of conservation planning for the city of San Diego.
In all, Proposition 12, would provide enough money to put the city within 4,000 acres of completing its goal of preserving about 52,000 acres of habitat, Story said.
In addition to a share of the $100 million habitat conservation funds, San Diego County government would also be expected to draw funds from several other Proposition 12 programs.
"When you add them, you are probably talking about $90 million or more that could probably be used for habitat protection" in rural county areas outside city limits, said Robert Asher, chief of the conservation program division of the county Department of Planning and Land Use.
Asher said more than 73,000 acres of habitat has already been preserved in these more rural areas, out of a total preservation goal of 101,000 acres under the conservation plan.
"If the bond act passes, we can get a major part of this land acquired in the next few years, if we can find willing sellers," Asher said.
The $40 million that Proposition 13 would allocate to save Southern California watershed lands also could be used to save habitats because rural, undeveloped lands are considered the best watersheds. The measure is officially the Safe Drinking Water, Clean Water, Watershed Protection and Flood Protection Bond Act.
Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Steve La Rue
STAFF WRITER
24-Jan-2000 Monday
A warm breeze rustles the California lilac bushes as a red-tailed hawk wheels over an expanse of sage scrub and chaparral frequented by gnat-catching birds.
This bucolic scene is not from a rural preserve but from within the boundaries of the city of San Diego, one of the few big cities where there are more than 1,500 acres of pristine habitat available to add to a growing city preserve system.
This land is just east of Miramar Marine Corps Air Station and is called East Elliott, after its one-time inclusion in the 1941 military base, Camp Elliott.
If the city can acquire the roughly 1,500 acres of East Elliott that surrounds the Sycamore Canyon landfill, it could increase the area of Mission Trails Regional Park -- already considered one of the country's largest urban nature preserves -- by 20 percent or more, says City Councilwoman Judy McCarty.
And with Proposition 12, the $2.1 billion state parks bond measure on the March 7 statewide ballot, she and city parks leaders believe the time is right to start annexing this land to the park.
"Many of these properties are undevelopable, and are on the side of hills," McCarty said of the dozens of parcels that investors bought from the federal government in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Some of these landowners have strongly opposed the city's plans for their land, but a recent court verdict may join with Proposition 12 to create a solution.
McCarty, who is credited as one of Mission Trails' original founders, said she believes that some of the $31 million that Proposition 12 is expected to pump into the county for parks development and related programs -- along with millions more for habitat acquisition -- could salve many of these landowners'
concerns by providing them a return on their investments.
"We have always wanted as much park as we could get, and my goal as council member has been to expand Mission Trails," she said.
To McCarty and city planners, East Elliott could be just the first of a series of steps that could begin a dramatic northern expansion of Mission Trail's rambling open habitat, as well as its hiking, biking and equestrian trails.
With the East Elliott property, the park could be extended to connect with roughly 1,100 acres of former missile testing range just north and east of Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. The city expects to acquire it from a developer in exchange for development rights on nearby property.
"We are excited about this land because it is probably one of the most pristine undisturbed areas as it relates to habitat value within the city limits," said Don Steele, the city's open space district manager.
This northern property, in turn, could eventually connect to the San Dieguito River Park -- a corridor of open space being preserved that extends from the mouth of the San Dieguito River to the threshold of Anza Borrego Desert State Park.
Another part of this recreational complex is a natural trail being created just south of the river park, from Torrey Pines State Preserve on the west through Los Penasquitos Canyon and eventually to the Cleveland National Forest in the east, said Rick Thompson, Mission Trails Park ranger.
"This trail also bisects the Pacific Crest Trail, which goes all the way from Mexico to Canada, so those are some real big linkages," he said.
Money first
But acquiring the East Elliott properties comes first, and McCarty said it could be the most difficult step in this expansion plan because it is likely to require the most money.
The East Elliott land is thought to be a good candidate for Proposition 12 financing because it also would play a significant role in maintaining the ecological health of Mission Trails Regional Park as a preserve close enough to the city to allow many residents to visit, including people of modest income who might be unable to visit wild areas farther away.
The largely undisturbed brushland of East Elliott connects to the Mission Trails' habitat under two large freeway bridges that support state Route 52 over Oak and Spring canyons.
More and more, habitat preserves are being surrounded by urban and suburban development, and the need to link them via habitat corridors has become a basic principle of the science of conservation biology.
Such links allow birds and mammals with very large ranges, such as bobcats and mountain lions, to frequent different habitats to feed, hunt or seek mates, or to flee from brush fires into new habitat areas.
Many of these same creatures will not try to run across or even fly over freeways, city streets or back yards, and they won't use narrow, dark tunnels that are sometimes created under roads as wildlife passages.
The Oak and Spring Canyon freeway bridges are very large and their undercrossings are wide and open, allowing uninhibited wildlife passage. But if the East Elliott land is developed, this habitat link to the park will have been cut off, Thompson and McCarty said.
"Oak Canyon is probably our most active and viable wildlife corridor in the park right now," said Thompson, the city ranger handling the expansion project. "We have a lot of the larger herbivores and carnivores moving through that area, which indicates the general health of Mission Trails."
Dorothy Leonard, chair of the park's citizens advisory committee, said, "We have to preserve those wildlife corridors north of 52."
These two wildlife corridors also attract dozens of hikers, bikers, bird-watchers and nature lovers each week. They enter the East Elliott lands and some also take trails that cross into the Marine Corps base, though city rangers warn them that they are trespassing and could have their expensive mountain bikes
confiscated if they are caught by Marine patrols.
"It may not be legitimate, but it is a very well-developed use pattern in this area," Thompson said.
Rather than banning this recreational use, McCarty and city planners want to legitimize it by negotiating trails easements with the Marine Corps and making land trades and purchases in Santee, which borders East Elliott to the east.
They say a coordinated, linked system of habitat and hiking, biking and equestrian trails would benefit not only civilian residents, but the Marine base's military residents.
"Having those recreational trails is not inconsistent with the habitat value of the land," Steele said. To the contrary, political support from trail users cold help ensure that the land is preserved, city planners said.
Several proposals
The East Elliott land has been zoned for one house per acre. Since the 1960s, landowners have filed but dropped one proposal for a much denser development, and another proposal for a private landfill. Some of them then filed a 1996 lawsuit charging that the city, in effect, illegally condemned their property without compensation.
Although a 1971 community plan tagged much of the East Elliott area for development, a 1997 city plan amendment concluded that development there is impractical because of "rugged topography, environmental constraints, lack of utility and road connections and other services."
The city won the lawsuit on appeal in a Jan. 12 decision that now allows landowners to sell their parcels, said Deputy City Attorney Anthony Shanley.
McCarty said she expects to bring the idea of buying these parcels with Proposition 12 money before other members of the San Diego City Council within a few weeks. Some landowners already welcome her efforts.
"The idea that part of this could become a park is probably good, and some of the people would probably be willing to sell," said Forrest "Woody" Brehm, a San Diego County developer who owns of some of the land and represents some of the other landowners.
Brehm is not part of the lawsuit, however, and said that not all of the landowners are likely to be of the same mind.
Information about the park's planned expansion, and other park features and issues, will be on display Feb. 5, in an all-day celebration to be held at the park to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the opening of its Visitor and Interpretive Center, just off Mission Gorge Road.
The free event will include ecology walks, discussions of early American Indian use of the park lands, discussions of birds of prey and predators found at the park, horse-drawn wagon rides, and tours of the Old Mission Dam and the new Kumeyaay Campground.
A rare opportunity
City should preserve Mission Trails land
January 27, 2000
Not as many people go to Mission Trails Park as go to Balboa Park. But more people see Mission Trails every day. From Ocean Beach, La Jolla, Clairemont, Mission Valley, San Carlos and many other neighborhoods, the slopes of Cowles Mountain and the ridges beside it are familiar sights to all of us.
Those who do hike Mission Trails discover something amazing: a 5,700-acre mountain and canyon wilderness within a major American city. There's nothing quite like it anywhere in the United States. And while it may not be as popular as Mission Bay Park or Balboa Park because its recreational benefits are passive, it's probably more important to the natural heritage of our region.
And now, San Diego has the opportunity to expand Mission Trails by nearly 1,500 acres by purchasing property north of Highway 52 in the sprawling chaparral of the East Elliot area. This privately-owned la
nd is practically undevelopable, due to its slopes, the complete lack of infrastructure and its proximity to a landfill and the Miramar air station flight path. San Diego City Councilwoman Judy McCarty proposes that the city use money from Proposition 12, a state parks bond measure on the March 7 ballot, to begin buying this land and adding it to Mission Trails. Of course, Proposition 12 has to pass first, but California voters usually see the wisdom in such measures to preserve parkland and improve outdoor recreation.
McCarty's idea is a good one, and deserves approval by the City Council. The property would not be bought up at at once, but would be part of an ongoing process of acquisition that would include purchase of some parcels and trades for others in an incremental approach that could include some federal dollars as well. When completed, Mission Trails would be linked to the mountains-to-ocean San Dieguito River Park and, through it, to other trails and parkland as well.
With San Diego expected to grow by 1 million people in the next two decades, and urban and suburban development certain to accompany that growth, the preservation of parkland and wilderness becomes all the more important.
Mission Trails is not only a wonderful park today, but it will become even more important as our city grows. It will become a vast island of natural tranquility amid a sea of busy urban development. When the city began preserving the land decades ago, it was on the fringes of our communities. Now, it's practically in the middle of them. And that trend will continue.
We're lucky to have Mission Trails today. But even more important, future generations in our ever-growing region will cherish it. Mayor Golding and the City Council should devise a strategy to expand the park, and enact a policy to gather the resources to do it. Our children and grandchildren will thank them.
Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.