More than a dozen Mendocino Coast residents traveled to Fortuna to attend a 10-hour meeting Monday, most to tell the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative”s Blue Ribbon Task Force to approve, not change, a locally originated ocean protection plan.
Monday was the task force”s day to sit and listen, first to state officials and scientists who pointed out flaws in the proposal to create 17 new marine protected areas that they said will require changes to meet the requirements of state law. Next, they listened for hours to North Coast residents, who mostly suggested — in the strongest polite language possible — that the task force adopt the unified proposal of the regional stakeholders group without editing it.
More than a dozen local governments including the Fort Bragg City Council and Mendocino County, have backed the local proposal as is.
Eureka fisherman Gene Morris recalled a promise from MLPAI organizers that if locals came together and created a single proposal, the MLPAI would sign off.
“It seems like years and years ago when this process started,” said Morris. “We did it, this community came up with a single, unified proposal. I”m wondering why we are all still here?”
Mendocino environmentalist Bill Heil, who has been involved in the MLPAI process since the first meeting, also backed the proposal.
“I”d like to see it stronger,… but if fishermen out there don”t support this, it”s not going to mean anything,” Heil said.
Autumn and Judy Trumper, both of Fort Bragg, whose family is in the urchin business, both asked the MLPAI to support a detailed plan for scientific study of the undersea resources after voting for the unified proposal.
“Please recommend the unified array with co-adaptive management of sea urchins,” Autumn Trumper said.
Environmentalist Beth Werner of Humboldt Baykeeper said the proposal preserves some areas critical to biodiversity, such as Vizcaino, Cape Mendocino and Reading Rock.
It represents our best concerted effort to meet the goals of the MLPA,” said Werner.
Not all speakers entirely supported the unified proposals, chief among those with continuing objections being members of Indian tribes.
Native American speakers welcomed the Blue Ribbon Task Force to Weott ancestral lands in Fortuna. While they praised the unified proposal, they said the entire process will trample on native rights if it goes into effect without other changes in law to exempt Native Americans.
“The [unified] proposal is a significant step in the right direction,” said Hawk Rosales, executive director of the Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council.
However, Rosales provided a list of suggestions in which native peoples would not be restricted. The stakeholders group created an opportunity for native gathering through recreational uses. Rosales said the state must create a new definition that applies only to Native American uses.
“Under no circumstances are tribal uses recreational in nature.”
The MLPAI process did not encounter, or plan for, Native American uses prior to beginning work north of San Francisco. The state had to reopen the North Central Coast (SF to Point Arena) maps after Native Americans complained they had been deprived access to a traditional gathering area there. In the North Coast region, Natives have mounted meeting takeovers and protests at MLPAI meetings and many have refused to recognize the state”s right to regulate what they say are federal treaty rights.
Nick Angeloff, a member of the MLPAI”s Statewide Interest Group and a member of the Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria, said Indians had taken good care of the ocean for centuries and should not have their rights tread upon.
“Native management can be seen in the archeological record,” said Angeloff. “The way that California treats its indigenous population in this will have implications to how the world views California.”
Assemblymember Wes Chesbro, who represents the entire North Coast region, said the Blue Ribbon Task Force must approve the unified proposal if local people who created the plan were to believe this was not a “top down” process.
“The unified proposal the North Coast stakeholder group has submitted is a good plan that addresses many of the concerns I have been expressing since the process began,” Chesbro said.
Chesbro said the Native issues must be faced, if not by the task force, by the new governor.
“The proposal must be modified to protect traditional gathering and fishing practices of North Coast tribes. If these changes are not included in the final proposal that goes forward to the Fish and Game Commission, I will be working with the Department of Fish and Game, California”s resources secretary and, if necessary, the new governor to ensure that the final plan protects the historical rights of North Coast tribes,” said Chesbro.
Assemblymember Noreen Evans also spoke in favor of the unified proposal.
Some environmentalists asked for greater protections. One fisherman talked about those who would break the law if the task force refused to accept the local plan. Another talked about how the MLPAI was following a script, down to the creation of Mendocino Abalone Watch that precluded local involvement.
Judy Vidaver, chair of the Ocean Protection Coalition in Fort Bragg, asked the task force to support the no-option alternative and change nothing until better science can be brought forward.
David Gurney, who was arrested in a public-access controversy for attempting to film a meeting where cameras had been banned, said the process would fail because it was illegal.
“By side-stepping and ignoring the laws, you will actually delay what you are trying to do,” said Gurney. “The fraud and illegality by this body is reprehensible,”
Jim Martin, a leader among recreational fishing groups and Mendocino County”s public outreach co-coordinator for the MLPAI, mentioned the critics on both sides of the unified plan and said the compromise that brought support to participating in the MLPAI process could be meddled away.
“It”s a fragile support, there is a soap bubble floating in the room, if somebody tries to grab it and change it, it will disappear,” Martin said.
One property owner provided a late protest to the unified plan, which will have a major impact on them.
Wilderness Unlimited, an exclusive private fishing and hunting club, wound up with a new protected area effectively shutting down access to the ocean for its members.
Wilderness Unlimited provides security and upscale membership opportunities in many local forests, but mostly stays under the radar. Rick Copeland said the oceanfront Lost Coast timber property Wilderness Unlimited has managed for the past 30 years is more restrictive than the state in the uses it allows and has protected the resource. Not being on anybody”s radar meant the Rockport-area property (known as Cape Vizcaino) was part of five miles of closures that start at the shoreline.
Copeland said although the people who use the upscale club are not likely to be from Mendocino County, they spend money in the local economy. The Soper Company, the timber company owner, uses its moneys to repair forests decimated by legacy logging and for activities like salmon restoration, Copeland said. He said the two companies did not have the resources to be involved in the process but had attended two open houses.
“Private coastal access of this type is unique,” Copeland said.
Copeland”s plea didn”t get much support on Monday. Heil said he had looked into Wilderness Unlimited.
“It sounded like Ducks Unlimited, like they do conservation. I wanted to join,” Heil said.
Instead he said he found it was about security and he wasn”t welcome.
“It”s for rich people from someplace else,… they don”t want to associate with the hoy-paloy, like me,” he said, encouraging the task force to continue to support the unified proposal.
During the first four hours of the meeting, the task force heard criticism of the unified proposal from scientists and the Department of Fish and Game. Rebecca Studebaker of DFG said the proposal must be made less confusing for enforcement and needs to include more reserve areas in order to provide the level of protections found elsewhere.
But state officials conceded that the complexity and compromises in protection were part of moves made to avoid Native American areas or accommodate their use.
The meeting continued Tuesday with a final vote by the Blue Ribbon Task Force.
The map
New “ocean parks” are concentrated in the area from Ten Mile Beach to just past the western tip of Cape Mendocino in the single unified Regional Stakeholders Group (RSG) proposal that was on the table for two long days of discussion this week.
The unified proposal would save the entire area from Point Arena to Ten Mile Beach from new protections — with the exception of protections for river outflows of the Navarro River and Big River.
The Marine Life Protection Act of 1999 authorized the creation of new offshore parks, which are called reserves, conservation areas and parks in the official terminology.
Using four “boards” including the Regional Stakeholders Group, the private Marine Life Protection Act Initiative has been gathering public input and forging recommendations on what areas of the California Coast to close to fishing, or to restrict fishing uses.
Three dozen regional stakeholders representing Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte county environmental, tribal and fishing interests created a proposed map that affects about 13 percent of the offshore areas of Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties. This is a smaller number than in other areas of California and the first time a regional stakeholders group has been willing to agree on a single proposal to recommend.
The new map of closed and restricted areas is being called the unified proposal. The map shows:
1. No new closed areas between Point Arena and Ten Mile, north of Fort Bragg. No closed areas around any of the four harbors in Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
2. Straightening the boundaries of the existing marine reserve at Point Cabrillo.
3. A large and complicated array that starts at Ten Mile Beach, where recreational and commercial crabbing will still be allowed in the immediate area of the beach. The closed area (state marine reserve) extends three miles out (limit of state waters) and about four miles north
4. Another restricted area, or state marine conservation area, that starts in an area of private property off Rockport Beach, (the area where Highway 1 turns inland and the “Lost Coast” starts). That new restricted area goes north a mile or so south of Usal Beach. Some commercial and recreational crabbing and salmon fishing will still be allowed offshore.
5. Dismantling the long time marine reserve at Punta Gorda. Four other closed areas will be created along Cape Mendocino, in the areas of Spanish Flat, Big Flat, Mattole Canyon and the very tip of Cape Mendocino, called Steamboat Springs.
6. Very few closures north of the tip of Cape Mendocino, partly in recognition of the heavy usage by Native Americans.
7. There will be new restricted areas at Somoa, Reading Rock and the Oregon-California border.
