The eight gabbro plants include five rare or endangered species, the Stebbins' morning glory, Pine Hill ceanothus, Pine Hill flannelbush, El Dorado bedstraw, and Layne's butterweed. The Recovery Plan proposes the preservation and management of specifically targeted parcels that combined total 5,001 acres of occupied habitat distributed among five preserve areas in western El Dorado County including areas Cameron Park, Shingle Springs, and Rescue.
The County has indicated that it is considering a program to protect the gabbro plants. This would result in a comprehensive conservation plan for the plants for future development activities that may affect these listed plants. The plan would also be incorporate into the County's Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan. The Wildlife Agencies understand that the County would expect such a plan to achieve the following outcomes:
- Long-term protection of the gabbro plants in a manner consistent with the County's General Plan.
- Regulatory compliance with ESA, CESA, and NFPA for a broad range of public and private activities, including residential, commercial, and infrastructure development, that may affect the five listed gabbro plant species.
- A streamlined and efficient process for individual projects to obtain state and federal authorizations.
- CEQA documentation that would allow for individual projects to subsequently proceed without environmental review of potential project impacts to the gabbro plants (i.e., a tiering process).
- Assurances from the Wildlife Agencies that the conservation measures set out in the plan will be durable, consistent, and predictable over the long-term, to the extent permissible by law.
- Project-Level mitigation that is proportional to the impacts caused by the project, and program-level requirements that are practicable and achievable.
- Identification of alternative preserve areas to allow for a flexible conservation strategy and for the accommodation of certain projects of special importance to the County.
The Wildlife Agencies support a County-sponsored planning process that meets these goals and results in state and federal regulatory coverage for development and other land use activities. The Wildlife Agencies believe that such a process would accommodate both the conservation goals of the agencies and the economic development goals of the County. The process would enable the County and Wildlife Agencies to collaborate on the development of a plan that is consistent with the Service's 2002 (Recovery Plan), but that is also sufficiently flexible to achieve this consistency through alternative approaches. We recognize, for instance, that the protection of all of the locations specifically identified in the Recovery Plan is likely not possible. As such, we would work with the County to identify suitable plant habitat outside of those targeted areas that would serve as replacement habitat for areas affected by future development. The Wildlife Agencies recognize that such flexibility is necessary to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
SOURCE: El Dorado Business Alliance
