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Poolside Progress
When Santa Rosa property owner Ron Engel decided to sell 40 acres of undeveloped property near Santa Rosa he offered it first to Cal Fish & Game, which chose not to purchase the land at its appraised value of $10,000. The property included approximately 14 acres of high quality vernal pools, and was home to two endangered species, making it unsuitable for development.
Engel had few options for disposing of the property until his real estate agent put him in touch with a member of the Santa Rosa Vernal Pools Task Force. In May, the property became part of the region's first vernal pool mitigation bank. According to Fish & Game's Carl Wilcox, the bank is critical to implementing the Task Force's strategy for "preserving the best of what's left" of vernal pool habitat while streamlining the regulatory process.
Vernal pools are dish-shaped seasonal wetlands with a unique soil composition that takes thousands of years to form and makes them challenging to restore, according to Diane Windham of U.S. Fish & Wildlife. Experts estimate that 50%-90% of the state's vernal pools have been lost since settlers arrived in California.
Congressman Frank Riggs convened the Task Force in the early 1990s to develop a preservation strategy for vernal pools. The Task Force includes representatives from Fish & Game, US Fish & Wildlife, the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA and local stakeholders. Wilcox says that a key piece of the strategy will fall into place when the Army Corps authorizes a General Permit for Sonoma County and its cities, including Santa Rosa, that delegates to local government the permitting process for vernal pool areas. The General Permit would allow local governments to permit development of low-quality vernal pools so long as the developers provide mitigation in the form of both creation and preservation of high-quality pool areas. Developers can satisfy the mitigation requirements by purchasing credits from banks such as Engel's, which was approved for 208 preservation credits. The credits are priced at $7,000 each, and Engel has agreed to set aside $35,000 to create an endowment for the long-term maintenance of the property. When all the credits have been sold, he says he will donate it to the state.
Elsewhere in the state Fish & Wildlife's Windham says that mitigation banks will play a part in the recovery plan being developed by the Central Valley Vernal Pool Recovery Team, which was convened early this year. The team, comprised of technical experts and stakeholders, is taking an ecosystem approach to vernal pool habitat recovery and hopes to complete a draft plan in 1998. Despite the difficulty of restoring vernal pools, Windham says she expects it to play a part in any recovery strategy.
"Even if we preserved every vernal pool we have left, it would not be enough to ensure the recovery of the threatened or endangered species that rely on vernal pool habitat," she says.
In a related development this spring, 13 state and federal agencies
signed an Interagency Vernal Pool initiative to improve the protection
of vernal pools, again using an ecosystem management approach. The agreement
calls for the signatories to work with urban and rural communities statewide
to establish a network of vernal pool preservation areas.
Contact: Carl Wilcox (707)944-5500 or Diane Windham, Central Valley Vernal Pool Recovery Team, (916) 979-2710
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