By the year 2020, California’s population is forecast to reach nearly 50 million people, an increase of over 30 percent from today. Early on in the Wilson Administration, efforts were initiated to prepare for this growth while preserving California’s unique and diverse environment. The Governor has always believed that California’s natural heritage is one of the state’s greatest assets and that economic development and environmental protection can, and indeed must, go hand in hand. The Resources Agency has worked aggressively to achieve this goal by developing innovative partnerships and market-based approaches to encourage conservation, both at the local and regional levels. Many of the Administration’s most innovative ideas have subsequently served as the basis for national models.

In 1991, the Wilson Administration revised the state’s approach to the protection of endangered species by creating the Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) program -- a program which was subsequently adopted on the federal level. The NCCP program is the nation's largest and most comprehensive commitment to ecosystem management, and has been endorsed by two presidents, 59 local governments, scores of landowners, significant members of the environmental community and many in industry.

A forward thinking program, the NCCP is designed to protect acreage sufficient to assure survival of a complete ecosystem and its dependent wildlife, while identifying for development or other uses those lands that do not possess unique natural characteristics. The program fully incorporates and builds upon federal habitat conservation plans (HCPs) and integrates local planning processes into landscape-scale conservation efforts.

The initial application of the NCCP program was in the 6,000 square mile coastal sage scrub ecosystem of Southern California that is home to the California gnatcatcher and more than 90 threatened or endangered species. This fragmented habitat encompasses large parts of San Diego, Riverside, and Orange counties, in addition to parts of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. With financial assistance from sources like the Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Program (EEMP), the NCCP program has been able to identify and purchase important habitat, like the Coal Canyon Biological Corridor project. This project, a critical wildlife corridor, encompasses a 23-acre parcel in Orange County identified by the NCCP as one of the two most important conservation linkages in Southern California. The linkage was recently secured by the Wilson Administration with $1 million in funding from the EEMP.

To date, Orange and San Diego Counties, the City of San Diego and the City of Poway have adopted cooperative NCCP programs which protect more than 200,000 acres of coastal sage scrub habitat. Other counties across the state, such as Placer County in the Sierra foothills, are now looking to adopt the NCCP approach.

In 1991, Governor Wilson initiated and signed legislation creating a Riparian Habitat Conservancy within the Wildlife Conservation Board to develop partnerships between government agencies and private organizations for the conservation of valuable riparian habitat. Since its inception, the program has acquired and improved more than 12,000 acres of riparian habitat throughout the State.

In 1995, the Resources Agency and the California Environmental Protection Agency signed an historic agreement which established a new state conservation banking policy. Conservation banks are wildlife habitat areas that are restored and permanently protected by the selling of credits to offset development impacts elsewhere. As specified by the 1995 Wilson Administration policy, conservation banks are specifically encouraged in areas where they can support continuing regional habitat conservation strategies. Since establishment of the policy, conservation banking projects have been created and supported by the state in the Central Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area, and southern California.

There are now over forty conservation banks throughout the state, composed of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat -- land worth more than $50 million. One example of a successful conservation bank is the 6,000-acre Coles Levee Ecosystem Reserve in Kern County. The preserve was established in 1992 by ARCO Western Energy, the land owner, by agreement with the California Department of Fish and Game and with the concurrence of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service. The conservation bank has helped ARCO to accomplish multiple objectives. The company is facilitating its continuing oil and gas operations, selling credits to other landowners in the Southern San Joaquin County, and helping with implementation of the Metropolitan Bakersfield Habitat Conservation Plan. The Coles Levee Reserve was the winner of a Ford Foundation/John F. Kennedy School of Government prize.

In order to document and promote the beneficial effects of conservation banking, the Resources Agency developed an on-line catalogue which provides interested parties with more information about the state’s program. The online catalog can be found at http://ceres.ca.gov.

In 1997, the Wilson Administration expanded the ecosystem management approach to the watersheds of California, especially to those watersheds providing habitat to coho salmon, steelhead and other diminished salmon stocks. Governor Wilson’s 1997 Executive Order W-159-97 established the cabinet-level Watershed Protection and Restoration Council (WPRC), charged with developing a California Watershed Protection Program. The Governor’s watershed approach recognized that: 1) habitat-wide plans help to protect species and prevent their depletion better than a single or series of mitigation plans; and 2) watershed-oriented environmental assessment is more efficient and effective than burdensome project-by-project, species-by-species review.

Since its founding, the WPRC has focused on providing oversight and coordination of state activities related to watershed protection and enhancement, including the conservation and restoration of anadromous salmonids in the coastal watersheds of California. In September 1997, a six-year $43 million Watershed Initiative program was approved to help fund the program. The WPRC is now actively engaged in supporting community-led comprehensive watershed plans that reduce chronic flooding problems, improve water quality, benefit fisheries, curtail soil erosion, and restore and protect wetlands and riparian areas. Successful efforts currently underway with Resources Agency assistance include the comprehensive five county effort on the north coast to protect salmon, known as the Transboundary Ecological Significant Unit (ESA), as well as the Russian River plan being developed in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

In December 1998, the Resources Agency with partners Bank of America, California Environmental Dialogue and Californians and the Land, brought together leaders from across the state to explore issues including: the impacts increased population will place on California’s natural resources, programs currently in place to protect wildlife habitat, watersheds, agricultural lands and open space, ways to facilitate broader coordination and more effective utilization of existing land conservation funding, and programs to protect the state’s natural diversity in the 21st century. Materials developed for the forum included a practical sourcebook on existing conservation efforts in the state and potential funding sources for local efforts. The publication, entitled The California Resources Handbook: a Guide to Conservation and Funding Sources, was distributed to every county and city in California to help local leaders improve land use planning in their communities and regions.

In recent years, an innovative program has been developed by the Resources Agency and the technical information staff at CERES, which has revolutionized access to land use planning data statewide. The Land Use Planning Information Network (LUPIN), an Internet-based information system, provides an aggregate view of California's land use and environmental planning information including county general plans, environmental assessment documents, and related information. Its goal is to formulate and implement an information network to address the needs of land use planners. LUPIN seeks to facilitate better informed decisions about land use, resource conservation and ecosystem management, and enables Californians to identify and assess the cumulative environmental impact of planning decisions.

LUPIN offers planners, local and regional governments, developers, conservationists, landowners, and others across California, unprecedented access to essential land use planning information including planning documents, reports and publications, legal and regulatory information and other essential data. As a program service, LUPIN also designs individualized web pages for each of California's 58 counties, providing a single point of access to a library of information which includes county profiles, as well as economic and demographic information, data about species, habitat and vegetation types, infrastructure, planning reports and publications from state and federal agencies, and environmental laws.

Another innovative web-based information system, the Watershed Information Technical System (WITS), was developed by the Resources Agency in conjunction with the Department of Fish and Game, the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and the State Water Resources Control Board. The goal of WITS, a component of CERES, is to provide the information and tools to support local watershed planning, restoration, monitoring, and education. It provides environmental documents, basin plans, visual materials, contacts with watershed groups, and online map-making using Geographic Information System (GIS) data layering.

WITS has two pilot watershed projects involving planning for the Russian River watershed of Sonoma and Mendocino counties and the cataloging of information for watersheds on the Mendocino coast. Both projects are integrated with the California Rivers Assessment program, a cooperative program of the Resources Agency, the University of California at Davis, and the University of California Berkeley Digital Library. In addition, WITS is linked to the California Watershed Projects Inventory, a listing of watershed projects statewide.