The Fort Bragg City Council on Monday night unanimously asked the State of California to approve, not modify, the results of seven months of work by 32 regional stakeholders as part of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative process.
“People in this area … came to terms with this state law,” said Councilman Jere Melo. “No other region has accomplished what they have done.”
What the North Coast Regional Stakeholders Group did was propose a single map of new areas closed to fishing or where fishing is restricted. In other regions of the California coast where the private-public Marine Life Protection Act Initiative has gathered public input, fishing and environmental groups advanced competing proposals.
Now the Fort Bragg Council, along with the Willits City Council, is asking that the local proposal be made into law, not recreated by statewide bodies. The Ukiah City Council and Mendocino County supervisors will be asked to take a position in the next two weeks.
The state law at issue is the state”s 1999 Marine Life Protection Act, which is now on the verge of local implementation. The goal of the MLPA is to create a connected array of new areas of the ocean along the California coast where fishing uses are prohibited or restricted.
The final proposal of the stakeholders group now faces three key hurdles. The first is the final North Coast Science Advisory Team (SAT) evaluation of the proposal. The SAT meets Oct. 13-14 at the Red Lion Hotel in Eureka, with a simulcast in Fort Bragg at C.V. Starr Community Center. The last meeting of the SAT is a Webinar on Nov. 17.
The stakeholders group”s map of protected areas will also be evaluated by the Department of Fish and Game and the Department of Parks and Recreation. All those comments, along with the map of new fishing restricted and closed areas, will then be forwarded to the North Coast Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF), which meets on Oct. 25-26 in Fortuna.
The task force is different in the North Coast Region than in other regions. Here, it was chaired by Cindy Gustafson, a local government representative from South Lake Tahoe, and includes local representation by Humboldt County Supervisor Jimmy Smith and Native American representative Roberta Reyes Cordero.
In the other regions, the Blue Ribbon Task Force was composed of big business and law representatives, with no locals, no oceanographers or other ocean experts on the panel. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, top California oil lobbyist, chaired the process in other regions and remains one of the members in the North Coast Region.
The task force can modify the local proposal based on the input by the scientists and agencies (or for any other reason) before sending a revised plan to the California Fish and Game Commission. A joint meeting involving the task force and the commission is planned for December but no date has been finalized.
Monday night
Dave Wright was the lone member of the stakeholders group to address the council Monday night.
“I”m surprised to be saying this. I was a complete skeptic of the MLPAI process,” said Wright. “I”m really proud to have worked with my fellow stakeholders … We did it and we did it on time,” Wright said.
The higher bodies shouldn”t change the map.”
“All of these MPAs hinge on each other, a lot of agreements and compromises were made. I don”t want to see this changed,” Wright said.
Wright said the best thing about the proposals is that they keep closed areas away from local harbors and their economies. The plan contains no new closed areas between Albion and Ten Mile River.
Jim Martin, a prominent sport fishing activist who is also the Mendocino County outreach coordinator for the MLPAI, asked the council to support the plan even though the closures are heaviest in Mendocino County and southern Humboldt County, south of Cape Mendocino.
Martin said between 12 and 13 percent of the coast between Point Arena and the Oregon border would be closed or restricted by the regional stakeholders group”s proposal now on the table.
Martin said Mendocino County has 140 miles of coastline with 66.93 square miles of ocean put into protected areas under the plan. Humboldt County has 196 miles of coastline with 64.4 square miles of protected areas in the plan. Del Norte has 55 miles of coastline, with 23.53 square miles of closures, Martin said.
The council praised the work of the stakeholders and the outreach coordinators, Martin and Jeanine Pfeiffer. Councilman Dave Turner praised Mayor Doug Hammerstrom and Councilman Melo, who took the leadership for the council on the issue.
Hammerstrom said he wanted to give special recognition to the late Skip Wollenberg, a stakeholders group member from Fort Bragg who died suddenly just before the process concluded. Hammerstrom said Wollenberg, a professional geologist, set the example for putting aside personal interests in favor of an approach that benefited the entire community.
“I would like to acknowledge [his] role … He did that in an exemplary way,” Hammerstrom said.
To see the proposal, go to www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/mpaproposals_nc.asp
Marine Map: http://northcoast.marinemap.org/ (under the “MPA Proposals” tab)
The name of the proposal is Round 3 NCRSG MPA Proposal.
