Some Harm, No Foul?

For years, battles have been raging in San Luis Obispo County over the future use of popular coastal parks that are also vital to endangered species. To quell the storm, state parks officials are drafting a 10-year plan to manage more than a dozen rare plants and animals in the territory.

The “habitat conservation” plan, which focuses on six beachfront state parks, is largely an attempt by the state to prevent costly and time-consuming litigation.

The California State Parks Department began writing the plan to obtain an “incidental take” permit from the federal government. The permit would in essence give the agency the legal right to allow a certain degree of harm to species during normal park operations. The aim is not to encourage the destruction of habitat but to allow recreation in the areas to continue, with some restrictions.

“Our intention is to operate the way we’ve been operating so far,” said Nick Franco, state parks superintendent for the county. “We want to protect species.... but we’re doing this to protect us from having to implement further restrictions on visitors.”

Conservation measures already in place would probably remain under the plan. Among them are unpopular seasonal beach closures intended to protect the snowy plover, a tiny federally protected seashore bird, and the endangered California least tern.

Parks officials are just beginning to draft the plan but say it will include provisions to protect various species, including the California red-legged frog, steelhead trout, tidewater Gobi fish and 10 types of plants.

It also will call for the eradication of ice plant, a nonnative species common in the region. That provision is sure to be controversial because some environmentalists say that this species of ice plant, native to South Africa, has become a habitat for the endangered Morro shoulderband snail and is crucial for its survival. The state is already being sued by Save the Park, an environmental group, over management of the snail.

The debate over the state parks in the county has prompted several lawsuits in recent years.

The Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club sued the state in 2001 to increase the enclosure reserved for the snowy plover in Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, a park in the southern half of the county that gets nearly 1.5 million visitors a year. Settled in December, the lawsuit increased the area reserved for the threatened bird in the dunes, drawing bitter complaints from off-road vehicle enthusiasts who use the area to practice their sport.

Preliminary drafts of the plan have not been made public and a final version may take a year to complete, but recreation enthusiasts and environmentalists, who have engaged in heated battles over access to public space in San Luis Obispo County for years, are keeping an eye on the process.

“We’re watching this carefully because habitat conservation plans are voluntary ... It’s up to the applicant to determine how robust a conservation effort it will be,” said Andrew Christie, chapter coordinator for the Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club.

On the other side of the debate are municipalities and park users who feel that their activities at public beaches, such as dog-walking or watching fireworks on the Fourth of July, are being unfairly curtailed.

At Morro Strand State Beach, 47 acres -- 32% of park acreage -- are partially off limits during the plover’s nesting season, which runs from March to September.

Jim Suty, president of Friends of Oceano Dunes, an organization that supports the rights of off-road enthusiasts, said his group would like to see more unrestricted open space in the dunes. Parks officials say Oceano Dunes is the only state park in Central or Southern California that allows recreational vehicles such as motorcycles and sand buggies on the coast.

Even so, Suty said restrictions on vehicle recreation in the area are “unrealistic, overbearing and something that’s not necessarily in the interest of the people.”

The city of Morro Bay filed a lawsuit last year asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider whether the snowy plover should remain listed as a threatened species. The city says there is not enough scientific evidence to prove that the coastal birds are different from plovers found inland -- and in greater numbers. The wildlife service is still reviewing the request.

The plover, which made its first appearance on a federal list of threatened species in 1993, is at the center of many debates in San Luis Obispo County.

The county, as with many localities along the Pacific coast, began setting barriers in the 1990s to keep humans and other predators away from land used by the bird during nesting season.

The sparrow-sized bird lays eggs on the sand near the water’s edge, precisely where humans like to go.

Conservation efforts that include fencing off the bird’s habitat are working, parks officials and environmentalists agree. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 230 adult plovers were counted in San Luis Obispo County in 1991. That number had jumped to 374 in 2004.

Habitat conservation plans are often criticized by environmentalists because the plans acknowledge that creatures might be killed by human activity and make it harder to prosecute violations of the federal Endangered Species Act. Still, because such plans must go through a public comment period before obtaining final approval by the wildlife service, some consider them somewhat useful negotiating tools.

“It is possible to challenge an HCP through litigation as the process rolls along.... The truth is, if you’re not at the negotiating table, you have no say in how the plan is drafted,” said Gordon Hensley, who is with the San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper, an environmental group.

And for the California parks department, the San Luis Obispo County plan would represent a truce of sorts.

The proposed plan “creates an agreement between all agencies involved and settles the question of how you’re going to manage and protect species and allow for recreational activities,” said Andy Zilke a parks superintendent who oversees Oceano Dunes.