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Conservation Capabilities

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California needs to strengthen its wildlife resource assessment and conservation planning capabilities. The state also needs to dedicate more reliable funding for wildlife conservation. These three needs are addressed in Chapter 4 of the conservation strategy full report.

Resource assessment, the monitoring and study of wildlife populations, habitats, and ecosystems, has long been recognized as a fundamental requirement for effective conservation, restoration, and management. All aspects of wildlife management, particularly efforts to restore species at risk, depend on biological information.

At present, Fish and Game can assess only a fraction of the species and habitats throughout the state, and wildlife managers often must make decisions and recommendations with limited information. To effectively monitor species populations and ecological trends, Fish and Game needs an expanded, comprehensive, statewide program that coordinates wildlife assessment activities.

Conservation planning is key function to minimize the impact of development on wildlife and ecosystems. Maintaining wildlife diversity and reversing the trend of declining species depend on integrating conservation and habitat restoration into local land-use decisions. Having recognized the detrimental consequences of the local project-by-project approach to development approval, California over the last 15 years has implemented a voluntary multispecies regional approach to wildlife habitat conservation. The California Natural Community Conservation Planning Program (NCCP), administered by Fish and Game, takes a regional, multispecies approach to planning for the protection and perpetuation of biological diversity. A Natural Community Conservation Plan provides regional protection for plants, animals, and their habitats, while allowing compatible and appropriate economic activity.

Developing NCCPs is one approach to regional multispecies and ecosystem conservation. However, over the next few decades, most development decisions will continue to be made outside the NCCP framework. Thus, conserving wildlife on private wildlands will require better integration of wildlife and habitat conservation into existing local land-use decision processes.

Because the role of local land-use decisions in conserving wildlife is so important, the strategy team held two one-day workshops (in Davis and Riverside) to discuss the barriers and opportunities for integrating wildlife conservation into local land-use decisions.

Existing conservation programs and many of the conservation actions recommended in this report require additional funding. Halting the slide of species toward endangered species status will require new research, expanded conservation planning and management, greatly increased species assessment and monitoring, and major habitat restoration projects. But success or failure to conserve California's wildlife may well hinge on the level of funding dedicated to wildlife conservation and restoration programs over the next few decades.