CHAPTER 2 - THE URBAN WILDLIFE INTERFACE

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One result of California's ongoing population growth has been a trend towards exurban development, and in particular an expansion of development at the urban-wildland interface. Oak woodlands have received a large part of this growth, since they are often near population centers, yet still offer a range of amenities associated with open space. Both the amount of development as well as the patterns resulting from scattered subdivisions and lot splits have been identified as concerns. The reduction and fragmentation of hardwood rangelands may have direct effects on habitat, watershed values, and local economies. They may also result in cumulative effects over time on each of these areas.

Since land use decisions are made primarily by counties, an increasing portion of IHRMP activities has been directed towards strengthening oak conservation strategies implemented at this level, Determining significant issues and ecological processes at the landscape and regional scales will help planners create comprehensive approaches. The program has also sought to identify effective conservation tools, especially those dealing with private lands and multiple ownerships. Finally, the IHRMP's educational component continues to develop avenues to communicate urban-wildland issues affecting oak woodlands.

Mailing to County Planners
After public hearings held May 6 and 7 in Sacramento, the Board of Forestry initiated a three-year program to promote county and local protection of oak woodlands. IHRMP notified planners of this new policy direction by sending a mailing to each county. Included in the packet was a letter explaining the Board's position, an oak woodlands map of the county with accompanying report, and two publications: A Planner's Guide for Oak Woodlands, and Guidelines for Developing and Evaluating Tree Ordinances. The mailing was the first direct communication by the Board and the IHRMP with the state's planners. Its purpose was to inform planners of their responsibility in Oak woodland conservation, and to provide key resources to help them in this effort.

Workshops and Presentations
IHRMP held seven planning workshops from December 1993 to March 1994 in Redding, Salinas, Stockton, Arroyo Grande, Emeryville, Los Angeles and San Diego. The objectives of the workshops were to elaborate on the Board of Forestry's policy, and to discuss relevant issues and conservation strategies. Five hundred seventy-five people attended, with environmental consultants (37%) and county and local planners (26%) comprising the largest groups. Twenty-five county planning departments were represented. Co-sponsors included the California Association of Resource Conservation Districts, the California Cattlemen's Association, the California Farm Bureau, the California Native Plant Society, the California Oak Foundation, the California Woolgrower's Association, the Endangered Habitats League, and the Board of Forestry's Range Management Advisory Committee.

In addition to providing information, another benefit of the workshops was the feedback that the IHRMP received. Among the priorities expressed by participants were increasing public education to support oak woodland plans, access to baseline information and technical assistance, landowner conservation incentives, coordination among planning organizations, as well as determining environmental thresholds in oak woodlands. These concerns will help IHRMP develop further activities and materials for planners.

The presentations and format of the workshops were tailored to meet the specific needs of each region. In one area comprising the north coast counties, IHRMP developed a different approach in lieu of an educational workshop. Planners in each county were surveyed by telephone to obtain their ideas on effective conservation strategies. The IHRMP hardwood specialist also made presentations to the Mendocino County Planning Commission, and to representatives of the 56 municipalities in Marin County. Information gained from the survey and the presentations will be used to design the best methods for outreach in these counties.

Publications
IHRMP published several new publications for planners in 1993 and 1994. A Planner's Guide for Oak Woodlands addresses the social, economic and ecological values of oak woodlands, details useful conservation strategies and planning tools, and highlights the experiences of the city of Visalia in an extensive case study. Landscape Conservation Planning: Preserving Ecosystems in Open Space Networks synthesizes a range of ecological concepts and interprets them for planners. For example, the book describes how issues of connectivity and diversity, and specific ecological processes can affect a preserve's spatial design, and the importance of allowing change in natural systems. Various types of situations and geographical areas are covered through 13 case studies.

In addition to the books, IHRMP also produced a newsletter for planners entitled Quercus. Quercus's mailing list includes approximately 4,000 planners, environmental consultants, and open space managers. Three issues of the newsletter have been distributed to date. Articles have focused on the Board of Forestry and its position, available resources and technical support, strategies for conserving oaks on private lands, the impacts of fragmentation, and different county conservation approaches. Lastly, IHRMP helped produce the brochure "A Property Owner's Guide to Reducing the Wildfire Threat". Written by Delbert Farnham, Farm Advisor in Amador County, over 5,000 copies of this publication have been distributed.

Quercus Newsletter for Planners Recognizing that planners play a key role in oak woodlands conservation, IHRMP launched the Quercus newsletter in the fall of 1993. It is a resource designed specifically for planners, and describes issues affecting oaks, conservation methods and how they can be implemented, and the broad range of information and services currently available. Quercus's mailing list of over 4,000 includes city, county and regional planners, private consultants, open space districts and preserves, as well as interested individuals. To date, three issues of the newsletter have been produced. Due to the Board of Forestry's increased emphasis on oak woodland planning, several articles were devoted to explaining the role of the Board, its new policy encouraging local conservation planning, and the IHRMP-sponsored planning workshops. Other pieces reported on the impacts of landscape fragmentation, strategies for conserving oaks on private lands, and case studies featuring innovative planning approaches. In addition to the workshops, a variety of publications, GIS data sources, incentive programs, private organizations, and opportunities for technical advice were also highlighted. The most recent issue of Quercus included a planner's survey. The responses from this survey will help IHRMP understand the Quercus readership and provide articles that match their interests. It should also demonstrate which resources are familiar and helpful to planners, as well as areas in which IHRMP support is especially needed.

Sustainable Landscapes Projects
The Sustainable Landscapes Projects are multi-county efforts organized by CDF to determine specific valuable components and processes of oak woodlands. The first project for the Central Coast region has been completed, while a second for the northern Sacramento Valley is due to start in the fall of 1994. Participants have included resource managers, landowners, planners, elected officials, community members, and conservation groups. The purpose of including such a range of backgrounds is to ensure that all important values and uses of oak woodlands are identified, to address available institutional structures and planning tools, and to encourage community involvement.

Two goals of the Sustainable Landscape Projects were to identify attributes of oak woodlands that are critical for long-term ecological function and sustainability, and to determine how these attributes can be quantified, measured, and monitored. The achievement of these goals by the Central Coast Project was more complex than anticipated. Difficult issues included the lack of specific data on oak woodland ecology, the need to incorporate economic objectives of landowners, and the time required for such a diverse group to communicate and work together. Among the Project's successes were the identification of important aspects of regional oak sustainability, the development of a group with ongoing interest in the woodlands, and increased local interest in oak conservation.

CDF will incorporate the experiences of the Central Coast Project into future efforts, offering more education for participants, and ensuring that their work is applicable to local issues. In addition, the groups may help CDF identify the need and potential for regional information centers. These centers could house data relevant to ecosystem management, including oak woodland systems. They could be used for local monitoring, and also help groups to check the accuracy of data collected by CDF.

Biological Monitoring
The IHRMP has become involved in two additional monitoring efforts in southern California. The Biological Review Information Unit is a pilot project initiated by IHRMP staff in 1991 in conjunction with the Urban and Environmental Outreach Program at U. C. Riverside. It is in the process of creating a spatial database which will be useful for county-level biological assessments. Planners could also use the data to identify potential impacts of urbanization in natural areas. Information from the Unit will be provided to CERES and national databases.

In a second project, the IHRMP is helping to coordinate monitoring by the Southwestern Ecoregion Planning Group. Comprised of federal and state agencies, the Group is designed to facilitate management of shared biological resources and to promote agency cooperation.

Fire Symposium
In May, 1993, the IHRMP, the California Board of Forestry, the Southern California Academy of Sciences and the California Native Plant Society held a symposium entitled "Brushfires in California Wildlands: Ecology and Resource Management". It was attended by approximately 400 scientists, resource managers, landowners, land use planners, and fire fighting officials. The presentations focused on the need for more comprehensive prefire planning along the urban-wildland interface, as well as the need for a coordinated approach to postfire recovery. The effect of fire on endangered species habitats was a particular concern.

The symposium demonstrated that major gaps exist in our current understanding of fire in fragmented landscapes. The role of fire in hardwood rangelands, as well as the effects of development on fire regimes, is a growing concern of the IHRMP. It is important to understand the influence of fire in maintaining different natural systems, and how the frequency and intensity of fires may change at the urban-wildland interface. Then it will be necessary to develop strategies which both maintain the ecology of hardwood rangelands and protect lives and private property.

Future Directions
Since 1993, the IHRMP has initiated a range of activities to address development in oak woodlands. The most significant was its outreach to planners and other community members influential in land use decisions. Through workshops, presentations, and educational materials, the program has sought to communicate the values of oak woodlands, and to assist planners in developing conservation strategies. It has also begun the process of identifying critical values and thresholds in oak woodlands by geographic region, and conducted research in fragmentation and development.

Yet much work still remains to effectively address issues at the urban-wildland interface. For the most part, data are lacking on which components and processes are essential for preserving sustainable oak woodland landscapes. Communication channels need to be improved to disseminate existing ecological information to planners. Many planners will require more assistance in developing, implementing, and evaluating strategies for oak conservation. The IHRMP is concerned that these strategies be comprehensive, integrating county-level policies, public support, and measures for monitoring and enforcement, and linked with other environmental protection efforts. Oak woodland conservation would also benefit from the formation of more regional planning groups. These groups are particularly helpful in addressing landscape ecology concerns, and issues such as oaks on private lands, and multiple jurisdictions and ownerships.

In the future, IHRMP will continue its work to improve planning in oak woodlands. One task will be to increase contact with county planners, to enhance communication between them and the IHRMP, and to discern the best ways by which the program can support their efforts. Areas of rapid development, such as the Sierra foothills, will be targeted for particular assistance. The Sustainable Landscapes Project will also continue with counties in the northern Sacramento Valley. In addition to direct planning activities, the IHRMP will increase research in landscape ecology, to better understand the importance of these concepts in oak woodland ecosystems. This research will help in assessing the impacts of development, and in determining useful planning strategies.

Birds and Fragmentation Over the past five years IHRMP researchers have studied woodland bird response to habitat fragmentation in Orange County. The initial results, published in a Southern California Academy of Science Publication (Keeley, J. 1993. Interface between ecology and land development in California), indicate that birds crowd into remaining woodlands during brushing and grading but disperse before the next breeding season. Populations of rare species experience greater fluctuation after fragmentation occurs, and there was a gradual decline in some common species. The extirpations and re-colonizations of species in both intact and fragmented woodlands suggest that oak woodland birds, which naturally experience patchy environments, may be better adapted to habitat fragmentation than their eastern deciduous forest counterparts. Continuing studies suggest that landscape effects, such as proximity to source populations, may keep woodland fragments occupied. Even though they continue to inhabit fragmented woodlands, few bird species escaped the edge effects and human activity created by the proximity of houses and roads. An unexpected result of habitat fragmentation was the huge influx of hikers, bicyclists, and equestrians (from 700 to 30,000 persons in one year) into woodland fragments after the rest of the landscape was converted into housing and commercial uses. The influence of this recreational activity may ultimately be greater than other affects along the woodland/housing interface in Orange County and other urbanized counties. A notable effect of human activity was a two-fold increase in nest heights along well-used trails compared to no change in wilder areas.

County Planners Survey

A telephone survey was conducted by the California Oak Foundation in the spring of 1994 to identify issues affecting oak conservation planning by the state's counties. Thirty-five of the 58 counties were included. A primary objective of the survey was to follow up on the mailing sent to planners by the Board of Forestry and the IHRMP, which explained the Board's new policy direction and provided oak distribution maps and two planning publications. Another objective was to determine which counties had conservation strategies and technical support useful for oak woodland planning. The survey results demonstrated that communication links between IHRMP and the counties were weak, and suggested several areas towards which the program might direct its efforts.

A major finding of the survey was that only 15 of the 35 people contacted were aware of the mailing. This result was of particular concern to the IHRMP, since these planners had been specifically designated by the counties as appropriate contacts, and should have received the mailing. Clearly, much greater effort is needed to forge and maintain communication channels with these planners, and to ensure that they have the information they need.

The survey also showed a general lack of planning tools and policies useful for oak woodland conservation. For example, only 5 counties had oak conservation policies in their general plans, just 5 counties had passed Board of Supervisor resolutions directed towards oak protection, and only 7 of the 35 counties had oak ordinances. While 12 counties had tree removal ordinances, 2 addressed heritage trees only, and 2 were limited to conifers. Six county general plans included biodiversity policies.

On the positive side, most counties did have a history of protecting certain natural areas. Twenty-one have designated special habitats such as coastal zones, wetlands, riparian are-as and migratory corridors for environmental protection. This finding demonstrates an opportunity for the IHRMP to incorporate oak issues into existing conservation efforts. Also, the counties may be making use of other strategies not specified in the general plans, such as mitigation applied on a case by case basis. The results were unclear in this area. Nine county general plan updates are scheduled within the next six years. These processes will offer the IHRMP specific opportunities to focus its educational activities.

The survey also demonstrated that county planners could benefit from technical support. Only 4 counties had a geographic information system (GIS) on line, but 11 more were in the process of obtaining one. Significantly, no county with a GIS had yet included oak woodlands in the database. In addition, the county planners did not seem to have strong ties to the Cooperative Extension or Resource Conservation District offices in their area. While these programs could provide useful information and resources, few were aware of their activities.

The effort by the California Oak Foundation provided useful information for the IHRMP. In particular, it emphasized the importance of creating and maintaining a network with planners. Planners could benefit from more education, and IHRMP must become more aware of planning issues and concerns. The survey also showed a great potential for work in developing conservation strategies and providing technical assistance. These results will help the IHRMP support conservation planning.

Biological Monitoring Along the Wildland/Urban Interface Monitoring resource change has become a major issue for state and federal resources agencies since the last IHRMP progress report. Creation of the National Biological Survey, the California Environmental Resources Evaluation System, and the CDF Strategic Planning Unit have placed greater emphasis on ecosystem monitoring in resource management. Urbanized counties in southern California are developing habitat conservation plans in concert with state level Natural Community Conservation Planning. In 1991, IHRMP staff began a pilot program to develop a database that could be used in local (county level) biological assessments. The Biological Resources Information Unit, a joint program with the Urban and Environmental Outreach Program at UC Riverside, is in the process of creating a spatial database that could be used by county staff to define likely impacts of urbanization in natural areas. The system will also provide information updates to CERES and national databanks. IHRMP staff is also helping to coordinate monitoring efforts among the members of the Southwestern Ecoregion Planning Group. This consortium of federal and state agencies is designed to facilitate management of shared biological resources and to promote agency cooperation. This system of sharing monitoring and management resources may become the research/field equivalent of bioregional councils.

Defining the Wildland-Urban Interface in San Diego County

The human population in Western San Diego County has doubled almost every decade since 1950. Approximately half of the landscape has been converted into urban, suburban, rural, and agricultural land uses. The remaining landscape, although somewhat disturbed, is best described as natural area.

Viewed from at the large scale, it appears that the wildland/urban interface should not be an issue for San Diego County. Like most urbanizing areas of California, the mass of San Diego's natural areas occurs away from city centers in the eastern foothills and mountains. However, a diffuse pattern of land development has placed suburban pockets (often referred to as "stealth cities") across a wide section of wildlands,

The growth and convergence of these land developments has produced over 2500 km of wildland/urban edge. Approximately 1900 km of this edge is suburban housing, touching over 60,000 houses and influencing far more. In turn, suburban pockets have increased wildland access to the county's growing population. The result is a mixture of influences and diffusion, with wildlands spreading fires into housing and housing distributing human disturbance into wildlands. Fragmented landscapes are more difficult to manage than intact landscapes because potential conflicts occur over a larger area and must be resolved in smaller land units with fewer options.

Most of the edge (60%) occurs in large fragments, which have highly interdigitated boundaries and are perforated by many other kinds of land use. Approximately 45% of this edge is composed of suburban housing, commercial, and industrial landuses. Farms, rural housing and less intensive land uses make up the other 55%.

The opposite is true for fragments less than 1000 ha (10 km2), where urban and suburban land uses form the majority (62%) of wildland edge. Those fragments (n=398) contribute 40% of the overall edge, but generate a disproportionately high number of wildland/urban issues because they are often inhabited by small populations of endangered or sensitive species. The viability of these isolated populations is subject to the environmental and demographic vagrancies, increasing the probability of local extirpation. Urban areas require flood control, fire protection, and recreation which may lead to the alteration of natural area habitats. Conflicts arise when these actions de-stabilize natural patterns of variability.

The amount of edge relative to the size of natural areas gives an indirect indication of the vulnerability of natural areas to outside influences. A circle, which has the smallest amount of edge of any geometric shape, provides an index for comparing the amount of wildland edge for a given sized natural area. If a circle has an edge index of 1, then a square has an index of 1.12 and a hand with outstretched finger has an index of 1.7. Map scale and resolution contribute a great deal to this index, such that smaller natural areas have far less potential for edge and tend to have lower index values. Nevertheless, few natural areas in our study came close to the edge index of a circle or square; small fragments have 2 to 8 times as much edge, larger fragments have 3 to 11 times more edge. Most disturbing is the amount of overall edge to the total amount of remaining natural area, which is 37 times more convoluted than a circle of equal area with 10 to 15 times more edge than would be predicted if developed lands had been consolidated.

Table 2-1. Characteristics of habitat fragments in San Diego County.

Fragment Size (ha) Class Total Number Natural Percent of Total Area Percent of Total Edge Average (SE) Edge to Area Index <50 287 3.0 12.7 1.7 + 0.04 50 to 100 37 1.6 4.9 2.4 + 0.1 100 to 500 61 8.2 16.3 2.7 + 0.1 500 to 1000 11 4.6 6.7 3.5 + 0.3 1000 to 5000 17 28.3 22.6 3.9 + 0.3 >5000 8 54.3 36.8 6.4 + 0.9

Table 2-2. The percentage of wildland edge contributed by different land uses along the wildland/urban interface of San Diego County.

Landuse Type Percent of Total Edge by Fragment Size (ha) Percent Contribution to wildland edge <100 100 to 1000 >1000 Suburban Housing 11.4 12.1 9.5 33.0 Commercial/Industrial 3.3 4.5 4.1 11.9 Rural Housing/Production 2.1 3.6 7.8 13.5 Cropland/Pasture 4.5 6.4 17.0 27.8 Lakes/Ocean 1.0 0.5 5.4 7.0 Highways/Freeways 0.9 1.3 2.6 4.8 Parkland/Golf Courses 0.5 0.9 0.6 2.0

Central Coast Sustainable Landscapes Project

The past year and a half a group of about 80 individuals, including representatives of local agencies, scientists, landowners, land-use planners, land managers, and other citizens have gotten together about once a mouth to identify what's needed to maintain oak woodlands and the way of life on the central coast. Referred to as the Central Coast Sustainable Landscapes Project (CCSLP), the program is sponsored by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) and is facilitated by the Center for Cooperative Solutions out of UC Davis. The principal goal of the project is to identify the characteristics or qualities of those oak woodland landscapes that are being sustained and those that are not. These include not only biological and physical characteristics (regeneration, soil moisture, density, soil quality, etc.), but also socio-economic and political. The idea is that once these characteristics are identified, county and city planners, local policy makers, landowners, and other implementers can assess the impact on the oak woodland landscape of their decisions.

Most previous projects have tried to develop only technical criteria by bringing together only the technical experts. Results of these efforts have been difficult for oak woodland users and implementers to understand and apply. The CCSLP has been unique in bringing administrators, technical people, and landowners into the same room to discuss not only technical, but also socioeconomic and political questions. The underlying premise of the CCSLP was that with their collective knowledge, the committee would be able to provide the information and observations necessary to identify the characteristics of sustainability. The process has been open, consensual, iterative—and slow. What has emerged, though, is an important beginning effort to frame its information in a way that is useful to planners, policy makers, and other implementers.

The Central Coast Resource Conservation and Development Council (RC&D) has volunteered to continue the work of the CCSLP. The reins will be passed from the CDF and the Center for Cooperative Solutions to the RC&D in September 1994. Central coast citizens will soon be getting involved in workshops, walkabouts, and other activities of the CCSLP. Hopefully these efforts in the CCSLP, and other such projects in California, will ensure the sustainabilily of the beautiful oak-studded California landscapes.


Restoring Oaks on Engineered Slopes

As the population of California expands, and more and more people move to the foothills, the impacts to oak woodlands, in terms of tree loss and habitat degradation, are continually increasing. While considerable effort has been directed towards working with the planning community to direct development away from the most sensitive areas, some tree loss is unavoidable. Often the mitigation for tree removal requires the planting of replacement seedlings. Unfortunately, in some instances, the places where we want to put trees back are on sites that have been severely disturbed through construction, resulting in extremely harsh conditions. Planting on "engineered slopes" that have either been cut away, removing most or all of the top soil, or have been back filled and compacted, creates problems normally not encountered in establishment plantings.

Little information exists about how to go about planting native California oaks on such difficult sites. To provide such information, the IHRMP, in cooperation with other UC researchers, is undertaking an extensive research project at a site in Contra Costa County. This project came about because residents in the area were very concerned that a building expansion was going to result in the loss of several hundred oak trees. As part of the mitigation for tree removal, the developer agreed to fund a project to evaluate various techniques for restoring oaks on severely disturbed sites. The hypothesis of the study is that the most significant limitation to oak survival and growth on such sites is the availability of rooting space. Treatments therefore vary the size and configuration of planting holes. The study is also examining the field performance of different stock types (liners vs. 5 gallon plants).

In addition to monitoring the biological responses of blue and coast live oak seedlings to alternative planting and maintenance approaches, this project is also evaluating the costs associated with different practices to determine which are most cost effective.

This study should provide some much needed guidelines for mitigation plantings on disturbed sites. To date, the results have indicated that while establishing oaks on "cut" or "fill" slopes is difficult, it can be accomplished if sufficient care is taken to plant, protect and maintain the seedlings properly. After 9 months, survival has been excellent. While the growth rate appears slower on these harsh sites compared to undisturbed controls, some of the coast live oak seedlings have grown so rapidly during the first year, that our main concern now is how to protect them from browsing by deer after they have grown up and over the top of 4-foot tree shelters placed around them.


Bioregional Planning

The concept of bioregional planning first became widely recognized by the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to Conserve California Biological Diversity in 1991. The original document was signed by ten state and federal agencies and institutions that were responsible for providing protection and stewardship of the state's natural resources. Since the original signing, several other state, federal and county agencies and organizations have signed the MOU.


Recognition of California's human impacts on the state's natural resources has spawned many local efforts to identify problems and to seek solutions to concerns for water quality and quantity, habitat fragmentation, land use policies, and declining populations of selected species. Originally, the state was divided in large geographic regions called bio-regions. It was soon recognized that the diversity of California's resources and the size of the bioregions made it logistically difficult for interested individuals to participate in bioregional efforts. Consequently, smaller sub-regional programs were initiated to address local concerns and strategies. The evolution from larger bioregional areas to smaller watershed groups functional at the local level has provided an atmosphere of a more focused and realistic, grassroot effort.

Groups of this type have developed in all areas of the state. Functional groups are meeting and discussing problems and potential strategies throughout the north coast, central coast, northern interior valleys, and southern portion of California. Each group is addressing concerns which are pertinent to that particular part of the State. Issues related to timber harvest, water quality and declining fish stocks are pertinent to northern California while southern California is focusing on planning issues, urban impacts on habitats and fire management.

The IHRMP has been involved in helping land owners and decision makers recognize the need for cross boundary considerations when managing natural resources through various planning workshops and seminars conducted throughout the State. The recent IHRMP publication, A Planner's Guide for Oak Woodlands is designed to help planners visualize the intrinsic nature of oak woodlands and the species which depend on them for survival. The publication details biological functions of oak woodlands and species dependence within this forest type. The publication has helped individuals and groups recognize the need for large scale planning strategies to maintain sustainable and functional oak woodlands across a landscape.

Functional local agreements that have been developed to help address landscape scale approaches included Coordinated Resource Management Programs (CRMPs), MOUs between local, state and federal interests to address specific concerns (Clear Lake Basin Interagency Committee, Lake County), and on a larger scale, the Natural Community Conservation Program (NCCP) instituted by the Resources Agency in southern California. In all cases, the IHRMP has been able to provide information and/or leadership by assisting these programs achieve their stated objectives.