Yolo County conservation plan could see approval

Blog note: this article references a grand jury report critical of the Yolo Habitat Conservancy.

The final Yolo Conservation plan — which has been in the works since the 1990s — will be considered for certification during an upcoming meeting.

The Yolo Habitat Conservancy will receive an updated plan and presentation that will encompass the environmental impact statement and the environmental impact report, according to a report prepared by Executive Director Petrea Marchand and Project Manager Heidi Tschudin.

The plan intends to provide protection to 12 species including palmate-bracted bird’s beak, valley elderberry longhorn beetle, California tiger salamander, western pond turtle, giant garter snake, Swainson’s hawk, white-tailed kite, western yellow-billed cuckoo, western burrowing owl, Least Bell’s vireo, bank swallow and tricolored blackbird, stated Marchand and Tschudin.

This is a reduction of the initial 32 species that were to be protected from a previous report, and will be discussed on Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the Yolo County Administration Building in the Board Chambers, room 206.

So far the agency has protected 90,967 acres, and hopes to build that up to approximately 653,549 acres with an additional 1,174 acres along Putah Creek in Solano County, according to a press release and report by Marchand,

The conservancy has worked with the Putah Creek Council, the Robbins Rice Company, the Yolo County Resource Conservation District, Muller Ranch, Capital Avenue Development Company, Kent Lang Farming, the Center for Land-Based Learning, Tuleyome, the Yolo Land Trust, and the Yolo Audubon Society to protect these species in Yolo County, according to their website.

Methods of protection include enhancement and restoration of habitats, enforcing a new conservation strategy, including identification of priority acquisition areas in riparian zones and other locations with important species habitat, reported Marchand and Tschudin.

The conservancy will be able to pay for the implementation of these actions by collecting local development mitigation fees necessary, according to the report.

In the past, the conservancy was under fire for misuse of funds by the Yolo County Grand Jury. The report — which was titled “Yolo Habitat Conservancy: a never ending story” — investigated the amount of time and money that has been used in creating the plan, as well as other issues the conservancy faced, as previously reported by The Democrat.

The conservancy responded by stating that they have only been in charge of the plan’s formation since 2002 and that similar plans in other counties have taken more than a decade to complete. They continued to state that the estimate of the costs is comparable to that of Placer County.

Marchand stated that the plan is a model for other communities because of the partnerships that have been created with farmers to provide wildlife habitat.

“We would not be celebrating this accomplishment today without the long-standing support of all five of the Conservancy’s member agencies, as well stakeholders representing farming, development, and the environment,” Marchand added.

May 4, 2018

Woodland Daily Democrat

By Cintia Lopez