After two years of controversy, camaraderie, meetings and maps, the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPAI) process ends with the California Fish & Game Commission (CFGC) meeting in Stockton on June 29-30. Ocean protection and marine protected areas will always be important future subjects, but this is the end of the road for the unique public-private MLPAI agency”s involvement on the North Coast.
Marine protected areas might now stay in place at Mackerricher, Russian Gulch and Van Damme state parks, a very late change that surprised locals involved in the process, several of whom are preparing comments for the CFGC meeting.
Other suggested changes of local interest surround creation of a marine protected area (MPA) at Ten Mile Beach. One suggestion would extend the fishing restricted area to the south. Another is for the state to not name the new Ten Mile Beach area MPAs after the late Skip Wollenberg.
The Commission, which oversees the California Department of Fish & Game, gets to decide whether to stay with 17 new marine protected areas, as proposed by regional stakeholders, or make those areas more in line with those in other areas of the state and suggestions from DFG staff.
The local MLPAI process was unique in several ways. Regional stakeholders from Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties were able to agree on a single plan. That didn”t happen anywhere else in California. In other areas, fishermen and environmentalists and factions of those forwarded competing proposals to the CDFG. That often resulted in contentious meetings.
While locals came together in the North Coast region, the process remains terribly entangled here.
The reason? Extensive Native American usage and rights in this region created complicated problems not foreseen by planners of the MLPAI process.
With native peoples not playing a major role elsewhere, the MLPAI arrived in the North Coast region unprepared for the reaction from local Indians. The state appointed Roberto Cordero, a Native American activist to their top body, the Blue Ribbon Task Force, and numerous Indians to the regional stakeholder group.
But when the MLPAI asked native peoples to define themselves and their gathering areas, many Indian peoples said those were two things they did not want to do. Natives said they were governed by federal treaties and many refused to recognize the authority of the MLPAI or the CDFG in regulating their takes. Indians staged peaceful takeovers of MLPAI meetings last summer.
With the native question clearly not solvable within the one-year time-frame of the MLPAI, the regional stakeholders adjusted their proposals to allow recreational uses that would also accommodate natives. That resulted in those proposals not scoring as high on the environmental protection scale as similar efforts in other areas.
Still, the Regional Stakeholders managed to agree on a single plan for the 17 new marine protected areas, mostly concentrated on the Lost Coast/Cape Mendocino area.
Now in its final act, the MLPAI has forwarded that plan to the CDFG, along with suggestions for modifications. The new plan can be seen at http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa/meetings_n.asp. It is 33 pages, with a wide range of actions for each, from no changes to big ones, to the plan as finalized by the Regional Stakeholders Group (RSG).
Interviews with four regional stakeholders revealed mostly opposition to changes to the plan they worked on for a year.
Bill Lemos, who represented environmental interests on the RSG, agreed with two fishermen that the boundary of the Ten Mile marine protected area should not be moved south of Ten Mile Beach to “Inglenook Creek.”
This reporter couldn”t find Inglenook Creek anywhere except on Google maps. It runs underground and is invisible from the ocean.
“My personal preference is to stick with the stakeholder recommendation for the southern boundary of the Ten Mile,” Lemos said.
“We thoroughly discussed this and decided that putting the boundary on a flat line where we did made most sense because someone on the ocean can”t distinguish Inglenook Creek from the rest of Ten Mile Beach. It might make sense from the perspective of a shore-based fisherman, but hardly anyone hikes that far down or up the beach to surf cast there, so we decided that in keeping with the 10-mile safety radius, we”d put it where we did. Made sense then, still does to me now,” Lemos said.
Jim Martin, who represents several fishing oriented groups, said making that move might be illegal.
“The law states that they have to at least consider the economic impact of these changes. The option proposed by DFG to change the southern boundary of the Ten Mile SMCA is particularly burdensome for salmon trollers out of Noyo Harbor. So far, they have not provided any economic impact data for the changes they are proposing,” Martin said.
The stakeholders recommended naming the new protected areas near Ten Mile Beach after Wollenberg, a geologist and community leader who died before the process could be completed. That would be confusing to future users and inconsistent with the practice in other regions, the DFG advised.
Stakeholder Dave Wright said the Commission should accept local recommendations for naming.
“I personally don”t care what the naming conventions were for the rest of the MLPA regions. Skip Wollenberg was an honorable man who, even though he knew he was near his end, continued working on the MLPA because he believed in it,” Wright said.
The stakeholders had recommended names, which included both Wollenberg and Ten Mile.
Continuing restricted areas at Mackerricher, Van Damme and Russian Gulch were requested by California State Parks. They had been slated for elimination because they were much smaller than the minimum size recommended for marine protected areas.
“If retained, the three MPAs would include boundary adjustments as recommended by California State Parks. Seaweeds would be added to the list of allowed species for recreational harvesting, to accommodate gathering by tribal communities. However, simplified regulations would also greatly improve public understanding and enforceability, and would be consistent with previous revisions to existing MPAs retained in other regions,” the DFG recommendation to the CDFG states.
Seaweed harvester Larry Knowles and urchin businessman Tom Trumper, both RSG members, took issue with the fact that State Parks didn”t make its comments when its proposal could have been scrutinized by the RSG, along with all the rest.
“Tom and I concurred that we cannot support the changes submitted by State Parks since they failed to vet them in the formal public process and therefore does not have the support of RSG members and their constituents,” Knowles said. “It presents a radical departure from what we as stakeholders worked on for a year and a half. This is a departure from the consistent message throughout the MLPA process that we were getting from DFG and the MLPAI staff emphasizing simplification of the existing MPAs for feasibility reasons.”
The CDFG will also be asked at the Stockton meeting to answer a list of questions the process didn”t provide solid answers for, such as whether waterfowl hunting should be allowed in estuaries, a subject that has generated controversy on the “Letters to the Editor” page in this newspaper regarding Big River. Other questions include whether Pacific Lamprey fishing should be allowed, whether shore pole fishing for salmon should be allowed off Navarro River and whether spearfishing for surf fish should be allowed in certain areas.
Marine Protected Areas are being used increasingly around the world as one means of sparing oceans from overfishing. As conceived by the MLPAI, the process only targeted fishing, or extraction, not considering the growing list of other proposed industrial uses in the process.
While the MLPA was a law passed by the California Legislature in 1999, the MLPAI was a private group, operating on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the state. The state signed the MOU after twice failing to implement the act on its own.
The Resources Legacy Foundation Fund (RLFF), a powerful organization that eschews publicity, was the funding force behind the MLPAI, along with many other state environmental projects, ranging from huge park ballot bond initiatives to the controversial Cargill acquisitions in the Bay Area. The RLFF paid the bills but has no direct role in creating the policy, which is done by the MLPAI through local and statewide committees. Members of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger”s cabinet appointed panels of scientists and local stakeholders who hashed out the boundaries of the protected areas. Those maps were passed on to the MLPAI”s top body, the Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF), composed mostly of leaders from the business world. The BRTF forwarded the Regional Stakeholders proposal to Sacramento, where the CFGC is tasked with putting them into law, beginning with the upcoming meeting.
