Agenda - 09-29-1999 - 9e - Laserfiche WebLink

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Require mitigation for major losses of forests for wildlife. Without planning, the proportion of land left for wildlife diminishes steadily. A solution is to negotiate mitigation for losses. Imagine a proposal to develop a tract of land in a way that decreases its Intrinsic Rating for wildlife or decreases the Contextual Rating of a nearby protected area. The County might require the developer or agency to protect land with equal ratings elsewhere. A requirement of this sort would also create an incentive to mini- mize any decrease in wildlife ratings for the property under development. For successful. mitigation, we do not have to put a dollar value on the consequences for wildlife. Instead, it is enough to determine whether a decrease in value for wildlife in one place is matched by an increase somewhere else. For this purpose, we can use a wildlife value, such as the Total Rating for wildlife, rather than a dollar value. Monitor how Orange County measures up as a Landscape for Wildlife. We can compute the grand total of the Total Ratings for all forests in Orange County. This grand total is an index of the County's overall suitability for native wildlife. The grand total changes over time as the forested areas of Orange County and their arrangement change. If we subtract all forested tracts for which building permits were issued between 1988 and 1998, Orange County's overall Total Rating for wildlife decreases from 30,130,000 to 23,273,000 — over 25% (see Table 3). As explained above in the section, How Ratings Have Changed in the Past Decade, it is not clear that the actual decrease is this large. An accurate measure of changes in the Countys forests will require analysis of a new set of aerial photographs. It would take a person about one month, full-time, to identify and digitize the forests of the entire County. Eventually satellite photogra- phy might become detailed enough to permit this sort of mapping automatically, but the reso- lution of satellite photos is not high enough at the present time. By obtaining up -to -date infor- mation every decade, the County could identify developing problems and monitor its progress in maintaining a Landscape with Wildlife. Promote a regional plan for a Landscape with Wildlife. A regional assessment of habitats for native wildlife, including large tracts of forest, will help Orange County to understand its own place in a Landscape with Wildlife. As described in the next section, some important wildlife areas in Orange County lie near county bound- aries. Much of the Contextual Ratings for these areas will depend on land in adjacent counties. Without a regional perspective, these areas are in danger of falling between the cracks in planning for a Landscape with Wildlife. CARE IS NECESSARY IN APPLYING WILDLIFE RATINGS The ratings we have proposed represent a first step in evaluating land for wildlife. The ratings include those features of natural habitats that current evidence suggests are important for many kinds of native wildlife and for which we had information. Different kinds of wildlife have different requirements, and different tracts of land have special features. Any one rating system cannot apply equally well to all. We have proposed ratings in the conviction that the time to start thinking about the value of land for wildlife is now. In using these ratings, it is important to keep several issues in mind. 17