Sierra In Peril; Sf 221

The Old Forest Service is of course charged with. The. Forest Service of course is charged with management of most of the most of the spirit of it and they of course have a multi-unit multiple use mandate that they have to try to achieve multiple resource objectives off that land. That's where the part of their difficulty in managing these lands comes in. Is it how do you balance the livestock grazing with tourism with wildlife needs and values like that they have a very difficult job ahead of them to try to to try to please all these groups and I don't know that you can do that on the same piece of ground. So there's going to have to be some tradeoffs and we're going to have to determine it at least in California how valuable livestock grazing is in the Sierra Nevada. When you have 30 million people in the state and a good many several million of those like to recreate Monsieur Nevada the value of livestock grazing really becomes suspect. It's a nice rapid update had said it was funny. What do you think it was.

Did you or did you receive any kind of complaints or inquiries were this this is occurring where you've got cows and campgrounds people people that we don't often hear about that those typically go directly to the Forest Service so well we often hear from groups that are concerned why are we doing something to help convince the Forest Service to reduce livestock raising and to help manage more for wildlife values and we certainly try and courage the agencies that are in charge of managing public lands to do that. Right now as you know issues this deal so. OK OK I think that's pretty much. Well those are issues they're going to have to deal with. Right. OK. Transcribers. OK. Douglas Pate Wheeler W H L E R. Secretary for resources for the state of California and the rest of us.

OK. If you need us just to deliver that script would be able to deliver. I mean if he's not here and you want someone just make sure to make sure that he gets a check of the National. Paper The Gotta do what you can. Okay good so good luck. Repeatedly. A shift away from resource extraction toward that subject and every sound bites here. All right. The amount of information you have still got my agent shipped us stuff as you know.

This is a good one. I mean I think we are seeing a change in resource dependency from one type to another. We have had a preponderance of extractive activity in the Sierra Nevada going back to the Gold Rush and even earlier than that in some. Places. But as those activities become less economic and less compatible with the increased population growth in the region will look to another kind of resource dependency one which is non consumptive in its use and which reflects a real yearning on the part of Californians and others for a protection of that landscape as it exists today not marred by some of the more degrading effects of extractive activity. You know this. OK OK so right now there is only awareness that the late great

banks want to go a different way. What happens next. How do we get to make things better. Well it is a very difficult transition to make particularly for people who are resource dependent. In the old way and whose livelihoods are now threatened by this change we're looking for sustainability which means not just that we would stop extractive activity but we'd want to make sure that it can be continued over time with respect to the environmental consequences of that activity. But what we need more than anything I think is an awareness of the issues you've raised and a way by which to anticipate this change in the future. A couple of things have come to mind over the last two or three years as we examined the need for a plan by which to proceed first better coordination of activities public and private within the region. One of the things that Tom Newton's piece is for the be brought to my attention is the fact that an awful lot of people are making decisions

and individuals as well as institutions which affect the future of the Sierra Nevada but very few of those activities are coordinated. No one is looking at the aggregate impact of developments for instance or even of the kinds of resource dependencies which would in the long run be beneficial if properly coordinated. The other important need in order to assure a sustainable future for this region is is better information about the resources and about the impacts of human activity on these resources which are addressed by the Sierra summit and some of the work that's been done since then. But if we bring the right perspective to this issue and if we inform ourselves with better information. It's my belief and I think this is shared by most people in the region that we can plan for a sustainable future which does allow perhaps for some continued extract of use but does expedite this transition to a less extractive resource dependent economy and which will protect the values which brought so many people to the

region in the first place. How do you factor in that during elections your very nature made the public at large for instance. What has to be done to. Bring people into the process. How important is it to bring people here who should be responsible for me. Well those are immense questions obviously but another of the lessons we've learned as we tried to thread our way through these issues in the last couple of years is the fact that unless you involve local interests and the grassroots you're not going to have a solution in which there is sufficient buy in to assure its success and its continuity that local interest has to be reconciled with the realisation that this is a nationally significant maybe an internationally

significant resource. But so long as people understand its value then we have a mechanism locally by which to make decisions which would reflect that value and to protect it. We've got to reconcile that most of the land use decisions most of the planning decisions are made locally and unless we involve. Local government and local interests in those decision making processes were not going to get the result that people at the national or international level might require. It's simply not possible to wave a wand to assure greater protection as some have suggested and expect that to happen. Unless you have the participation of those local interests and unless you recognize that we need to integrate our environmental and our economic objectives. Oh don't be like that then save the water. Extraction their way.

They ultimately have to be involved right now. Ranges primary resource center. How do you how do you accomplish this. Don't get me. Don't go there here you know where the serious they have to be made more aware. Of the dependence they have upon this range for those resources and in fact something like 80 or 85 percent of the state's precipitation occurs in the Sierra Nevada in the form of snow fall and snow pack. Something like 80 or 85 percent of the state's water consumption occurs below the bay Delta complex and thus the state project the federal project both of which have as their principal intention to move water from the Sierra Nevada to southern and central valley users. There's a very direct connection as to water as to the air shed as to even some of the extractive activity minerals and and timber which if people are more aware I think of their

dependency particularly outside the region they'll be more sensitive to the need to manage these resources effectively. That I think is an issue largely of public information public education top side. You repeat. The question of whether or not a larger population or audience can be brought into this discussion of how to manage the resources of the Sierra Nevada. It is really a question of public information and public education. It certainly is true as your question suggests that the people of the Central Valley and of Southern California are largely dependent on water which originates in the Sierra Nevada snow pack or precipitation. Much of that 80 or 85 percent occurs north of the bay Delta much 80 or 85

percent of the consumption occurs south of the bay Delta. We've got two massive water projects just to use one example whose purpose it is to move that water from north to south and the people of Southern California in the Central Valley are very much dependent upon that water resource and effective management of the resource whether they realize it or not. So the solution really is to get greater public involvement in California with these issues and I think the key to that involvement is public education and public information. Kids are kids right. And for us it's tiny. Then the mystery's kids. Well kids kids are an indicator species in this ecosystem suggesting a need for that kind of sustainable management of the resource both to protect the values which are

so appealing to kids and to us all but also to assure their future in a resource dependent economy they won't be able to come back to the region as some of them hope unless they are able to find employment there and employment which is consistent with our aspirations for protecting those resource values. So the 25 or 30 or 40 percent of growth which is going to occur in this region over the next 20 years or so depending on what part of the region and whose demographics you you accept big growth under any circumstance. Those are the kids those are the next generation of Sierra Nevada and who have reasonable expectations that those values and those resources. Will be protected for their use and enjoyment just as they have been there for previous generations. The kids are really what this is all about. And in this region perhaps like no other region of California we have a chance to do it right from the start. We have

this convergence of a really spectacularly significant resource both from its economic and from its environmental perspectives. But we have also this knowledge that growth is going to occur there as it has occurred at no time in the past a very rapid rate of growth moving increasingly up from the Central Valley through the foothills and into the Sierra Nevada. Those two trends I should suggest to us the need now to take action which assures that that balance future could be attained. Yes you should talk about the significance of studying the state of California. In fact they're already trying to censor street signs. I think it might be presumptuous to say that we're on the leading edge we're certainly ahead of most in

terms of our awareness of the need for a plan and in terms of this ecosystem approach I think what we've learned over the last couple of years is that we have to draw our map broadly enough to encompass the full array of these resources and the impacts upon them and the state of California can be divided into 10 bio regions one of which is the Sierra Nevada and for the first time we've embarked upon a planning process which recognizes the interactions within the entirety of that bio region and the need to involve all who have an impact upon it. I don't know of another region this large which has embarked upon such an extensive planning process. You know there's. Other mountains of stuff. The model which we offer for other regions mountainous regions like the Sierra Nevada although not are exactly comparable. Is this ecosystem approach

the recognition that we can't plan successfully that IT manager resource or to assess its impacts or the impacts of outside affect unless we look at the entirety of the bio region and the way in which the interactions occur within that natural system. I don't know of another part of the United States in which ecosystem planning is being undertaken on this scale which scale we believe imperative to a successful result. If you close the store you might get a little bit more of a driving range or higher.

Kids in the region particularly. How do you count. Oh well you've mentioned a series of very important consequences of continued development and urbanization and in this region one is water and the need to supply adequate amounts to a region which has been largely arid despite the fact that it has a lot of snow fall most of that water is destined to move south and not to be consumed within its area of origin origin. The second is the impact of development within forested areas where the threat of fire is increasingly a problem. And the third is the interaction between the human population and the wildlife population. All of those are the result of a changing development pattern. None of them is a particularly

easy problem to solve but but each must must be addressed they are in a way a natural consequence of growth in areas that had been here before uninhabited and we have to be careful the development patterns in this region particularly our region as sensitive as this one is mindful of those effects. We are seeing today the consequences of our failure to take into account the fire hazard which results from building in remote areas and the whole thrust of the services provided by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection for instance has moved from management of fire within the ecosystem for purposes of timber management to the protection of private property as homes increasingly are built in indefensible areas within the so-called Area of state responsibility local government and state government have to accept some responsibility for making that pattern more orderly and more defensible. Basically just as we have to be sure that before we commit to a

pattern of development that is not sustainable here's that word again of sustainability. There's going to be an adequate water supply over time. And just as we have to make sure that interaction between human occupation and the wildlife population is minimized to the extent possible that we're all sensitized to the fact that we are moving into one another's territory as it were and that we're going to have to coexist as part of this larger ecosystem. Here. Reverend Jackson you raise money and do you know what they are about forty two million by the year 2000 and 10 so we're looking at about a third. This is state wide now a third increase over the next. What would that be 15 years or so. We just completed a study that occurs every five years of a supply and demand equilibrium or disequilibrium by the

Department of Water Resources which attempts to forecast demand and supply and what we find that in that planning horizon over the year 2010 the state will be on the order of two to four million acre feet short of its current projected supply which means that we will not have enough water to sustain agriculture to sustain municipal uses to protect the environment unless again we take action today to conserve water to move it more effectively to make better use of that which we already have through reclamation and recycling to better manage our groundwater to rely on new technologies like desalinization. There are lots of options there. But it's like the problem of the Sierra Nevada. We get to know it to acknowledge that there is a problem does not mean that we are able to solve it until we develop the political will to move forward to adopt plans and to anticipate a need that we know is inevitably going to arise. Well the demand for water will mean increasingly

greater dependence on the supply which originates within the Sierra Nevada on the part of the rest of the state. Already we are confronted with a very difficult problem of moving Sierra Nevada water through the bay Delta estuary which has in turn created environmental problems that we are now attempting to solve. We're not going to be able to move all whole lot more water through that bay Delta estuary until we can find a way to do so safely and without adverse environmental consequences. The pressure to find that solution will increase as the demand below the Delta increases. But we have to think always in terms of the fact that this water of the Sierra Nevada is not an infinite supply. Some of our planning for the future of Southern California in the Central Valley begins to recognize the need to build reservoirs below the delta or to establish groundwater reservoirs below the delta so that these areas which have heretofore consumed water mostly from the Sierra Nevada become a little more self-sufficient.

I know the source of water for Southern California which has some prospect of being increased is the Columbia River or the Colorado River system. It rains everywhere you see. I think the principal issue is I don't wear n'est that everyone who either resides within that area who expects to reside there or who is in some way dependent on it either for resources or enjoyment has a stake in its future and that the decisions we make about that future cannot be adversarial or confrontational or will find ourselves locked in paralysis over the future wasting time and energy which ought to be devoted instead to planning for this sustainable future. It's easier said than done that we need a consensus.

But that's exactly what we do need we need first to have information about the threats to this region. And I think we've begun to understand that through the Sierra summit and process is flowing from it. What we now need is a political will to deal with those issues in the realisation that we're neither developers or preservationist where neither northerners or Southerners were neither flatlanders or or mountain folk but that we are all of us Californians who cherish this resource and should have a commitment to its sustainable future. I don't know how we're going to get from here to there. I know we have to make that transition and that we're just beginning a process which could lead us in the right direction. If we wake up and recognize the signals that the Sierra have been to some degree threatened by our lack of concern in the past and that is Population and Development continue we cannot afford to ignore that risk. Generalists.

Well you know what one of my one of the things one of the things you should say and I think you're probably going to be able to say it photographically graphically better than I can is that it is an encouraging thing that we have so many of these grassroots organizations beginning to spring up who recognize both the sort of state and national imperative but also recognize the need to involve citizens at the local level because ultimately the success of any effort at long term planning ecosystem management will depend on people at the grassroots who are going to be day to day involved in making these decisions. One time in a stream for him. His timing is pretty good. Well I don't know if there's any there's need for energy there's need for vision. There's also a need for consensus and I think we've had extremes or extremists on all sides of the of the spectrum we need to come to a realisation that no matter what that perspective might have been consensus is

necessary for that to break the gridlock plan for the future and enjoy what these spectacular mountains have to offer. All right.