California Coast & Ocean

Alameda Stock Ponds to Be Restored for Wildlife
Many of the ponds created for livestock in California have become important habitat for wildlife, but over time the ponds tend to fill with silt and their spillways erode. Because maintaining them is expensive and time-consuming, many ranchers have turned to tanks and troughs and have let their ponds deteriorate. The Alameda County Resource Conservation District (RCD), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and Environmental Defense have formed a partnership to offer ranchers incentives to restore some of the 650 manmade ponds in Alameda County for wildlife to use. In October, the Conservancy approved $50,000 toward the first five of these projects, all in the eastern part of the county and all on private land.

Landowners who participate will be required to restore and manage the ponds and the 300 acres of rangeland surrounding each of them to accommodate the habitat needs of the threatened California red-legged frog and California tiger salamander. Other animals, including western pond turtles, San Joaquin kit foxes and Alameda whipsnakes, will benefit from the habitat restoration as well.

Excess sediment will be removed from the ponds, eroded spillways and gullies will be repaired, and willows and other riparian vegetation will be planted. Some areas of the ponds will be used by livestock because grazing creates good habitat for the threatened species: short bank vegetation is good for both tiger salamanders and red-legged frogs, and areas with little or no vegetation and muddied waters are beneficial to tiger salamander larvae. Livestock will be kept out of some areas.

The NRCS will provide technical and financial assistance to participating ranchers, while the RCD will offer environmental permitting assistance. Fish & Wildlife will provide assurances that the restoration projects will not subject the ranchers to additional regulatory restrictions. All five ranch owners intend to seek conservation easements for their lands, and the pond restoration projects will make them more competitive for funding.

Another Humboldt County Ranch Gains Protection
The 1,532-acre Valley View Ranch on the North Fork of the Mattole River, near Petrolia, is the latest property to be protected through a conservation easement as part of the Six Rivers to the Sea program. A cooperative effort between ranchers and land stewardship organizations in Humboldt County, this program seeks to preserve nearly 10,000 acres of working ranchland and forestland between Six Rivers National Forest and the ocean (see Coast & Ocean, Vol. 21, No. 4). Ranch owners in this region have been under heavy pressure to sell their land for development as they struggle to survive on diminishing incomes. The California Department of Forestry will acquire the Valley View Ranch easement with the help of $1 million approved by the Conservancy in November.

Valley View Ranch is key to protecting the lower reaches of the North Fork of the Mattole, which runs through the property in two places along its western boundary. The ranch has been in the Sweet family since 1898 and will remain working timber and ranch land, with forestry restrictions in place to make the timber harvest sustainable. The easement controls the number and placement of new structures and roads, limits the development of water resources, and rules out residential and most commercial development. Some new commercial activities, such as a small-scale furniture factory, will be allowed.

Conservation easements have already been acquired for two of the other five properties included in the first phase of Six Rivers to the Sea; the Price Creek Ranch easement, completed in August 2006, was funded in part by $1 million approved by the Conservancy in December 2005.

New Public Accessway for Venice Beach
Venice beach, just south of Santa Monica, draws more than a million visitors each year to stroll the waterfront and enjoy the street performers, roller skaters, body builders, and other colorful folk populating its Ocean Front Walk. Soon, two vacant lots will be transformed into a safe and attractive accessway from the beach to Venice's scenic canal area, with the help of a $100,000 grant approved by the Conservancy in October.

The City of Los Angeles owns easements on the lots, which residents and visitors already use to walk between the beach and the canals. Those who take this route, however, must negotiate rusty fencing, holes in the ground, and debris. The nonprofit Venice Canals Foundation, formed in part to support improvements to the accessway, will use the Conservancy funds to remove hazards and invasive plants, build a new paved pathway, and plant drought-tolerant vegetation. Other improvements include curb cuts, signs, trash bins, and fencing.

The project design also includes swales to control stormwater onsite and allow infiltration of runoff that currently flows directly into the canals and out to the ocean. This part of the project will be funded by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Watershed Protection Division.