A century later, Santa Cruz Island wetland to be restored

 
A major restoration project could bring back a long-degraded wetland to one of the Channel Islands.

Workers have broken ground on a $1-million project that will cut down 1,800 nonnative eucalyptus trees and scoop out tons of dirt and gravel to restore a coastal wetland on Santa Cruz Island, Channel Islands National Park officials announced Monday.

In the coming months, crews will work to return some 60 acres of habitat on the rugged island to the way it was before being degraded by ranching and farming activity more than a century ago.

Crews have started using heavy equipment to reshape the mouth of the island’s largest stream so it will flow freely onto 4 acres of restored wetland at Prisoners Harbor.

The anchorage on the north side of the island was once home to the largest coastal wetland in the Channel Islands, an archipelago of five ecologically distinct islands that are sometimes referred to as North America’s Galapagos.

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-- Tony Barboza

Photo:  Aerial view of Santa Cruz Island. Credit: Al Seib

$44.4-million settlement reached in San Francisco Bay oil spill

Local, state and federal officials on Monday announced a $44.4-million civil settlement with the owners and operators of a container ship that spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay after striking a tower of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in heavy morning fog.

The 2007 spill killed thousands of birds, damaged the bay’s herring spawn, sullied miles of coastal habitat and closed regional waters and beaches to fishing and recreation.

"This bay is the jewel of the San Francisco region and the Cosco Busan oil spill left a lasting scar across our water, natural habitats and wildlife," California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris said in a statement. "This settlement will allow all of these precious resources to be restored to their original health and beauty."

The settlement comes in the form of a U.S. Justice Department consent decree negotiated with Regal Stone Limited and Fleet Management Ltd., the owners and operators of the M/V Cosco Busan. The state, the city and county of San Francisco and the city of Richmond also are parties to the decree.

The settlement includes funds for natural resource restoration, penalties and reimbursement to governmental entities for spill response costs.

California shark fin ban advances

This post has been corrected. See note below for details.

A push to outlaw shark fins, the main ingredient in a traditional Chinese soup, cleared a key obstacle Thursday when it passed a state Senate committee.

The bill, which would ban the sale, trade and possession of shark fins in the state, has been championed by conservation groups as a way to curb their harvest, a practice that has contributed to the sharp decline of shark populations worldwide.

But the measure has divided California’s Chinese American community. For centuries the gelatinous soup prepared with dried shark fins has been served as a pricey Chinese delicacy, and opponents say banning it would discriminate against a cultural tradition.

The bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee on a 5-2 vote and now moves to the Senate floor, where a vote is expected within the next few weeks.

The California State Assembly passed the ban in May, 65 to 8, but it ran into obstacles in the upper house.

Chinese American restaurateurs and traders have lobbied against the ban and are being backed by several Chinese American lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), who voted against the measure Thursday. Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) has called it "an unfair attack on Asian culture and cuisine."

On the other side are conservationists, who are supported by some Chinese American lawmakers, chefs and celebrities, including basketball star Yao Ming. Tens of millions of sharks are killed each year for their fins and scientists say the fin trade threatens to disrupt ocean ecosystems. To harvest the fins, fishermen cut them off live sharks and dump them back in the water to die.

Assemblyman Paul Fong (D-Sunnyvale), a sponsor of the bill, was born in China and grew up eating shark fin soup but turned against it several years ago after watching a film about how the fin trade was wiping out shark populations.

“At this rate they're going to be extinct in our lifetime,” Fong said in an interview. “And without the top predator, our ocean's ecosystem goes into a huge imbalance and falls like a house of cards.”

“I'm proud of my Chinese roots, and our culture will live and survive without shark's fin,” he added.

Similar legislation has been signed in Washington, Oregon and Hawaii. President Obama signed federal legislation tightening a ban on shark finning in U.S. waters this year.

If approved by the Senate and signed by the governor, the California law would go into effect in 2013.

For the record, 2:45 p.m. Aug. 25: A previous version of this post misattributed a quote to Sen. Ted Lieu. It is Sen. Leland Yee who has called the ban "an unfair attack on Asian culture and cuisine."

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Photo: Shark fins drying on a boat in Micronesia. The California Senate has moved forward to ban sale, trade and possession of the culinary delicacy. Credit: Associated Press

City Council not commenting on Laguna Beach access issue

The Laguna Beach City Council accepted petitions that supported public beach access through private property at Rockledge in Laguna Beach, but refrained from making any comments on the emotionally charged issue.

City Manager John Pietig advised the council to button its lips because of a lawsuit filed by a Rockledge resident against his neighboring property owner, Mark Towfiq, and the city. He argues those who go through the property are trespassing.

"This property has always been protected by a gate at the ocean and an iron gate in front of the property," Towfiq said. "If you are the public, you have been trespassing if you are going to use this property to get to the ocean. There is no other way around it."

The issue of public access through Towfiq's property was raised at the July 12 meeting, according to the Coastline Pilot.

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Agency seeks to end sea otter relocations, to allow them off SoCal

After 24 years of barring sea otters from most Southern California waters and trying to establish a colony for the threatened animals on San Nicolas Island, federal wildlife officials on Wednesday announced a proposal to abandon the program, saying it failed to help the threatened species recover.

The proposal announced Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would allow sea otters to expand naturally into their historic range off Southern California and officially put an end to a relocation program long criticized as ineffective and harmful to the marine mammals.

Starting in 1987, federal officials relocated 140 sea otters from Monterey Bay to San Nicolas Island, 60 miles off the coast, to try to establish a new population of southern sea otters there in case a disaster, such as an oil spill, threatened them with extinction.

As part of a compromise with fishing groups, the government declared waters from Point Conception to the Mexican border a “no-otter zone” and promised to round up any otters that strayed into waters along the Southern California mainland, where they dine on the same shellfish fishermen seek.

But the new colony failed to take hold as many of the otters relocated to the island swam away to return to their parent population along the Central Coast, disappeared or died.

“About half of the otters we brought out there, we don’t really know what happened to them,” said Lilian Carswell, southern sea otter recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We learned that the basic, underlying concept was flawed: that you can move sea otters in this mechanistic way and expect them to do what you want them to do instead of what they want to do.”

Under the plan, the 46 otters that remain at San Nicolas Island would be allowed to stay there and would no longer be considered an experimental population as they have for more than two decades. Sea otters in Southern California would be given the same protections as those along the Central Coast.

The Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to release a draft of the decision by next month under a settlement agreement last year with the Otter Project and Environmental Defense Center, conservation groups that sued the agency in 2009 to force them to end the program.

In a joint statement, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Sea Otter, the Humane Society of the United States and the Monterey Bay Aquarium applauded the decision, calling the no-otter zone “ineffective and harmful."

“For sea otters to have a real shot at recovery, they must be allowed to return to their historic range off the coast of Southern California,” they said. “If sea otters thrive again throughout their historic range, the entire marine ecosystem will benefit.”

By the early 1990s it became clear to federal wildlife officials that otters being relocated from Southern California to the Central Coast were dying after being released and that enforcing an artificial boundary was not helping restore the population. The last time the Fish and Wildlife Service moved otters out of Southern California waters was in 1993.

“Nobody really thought that you could take an ocean-going animal and draw an imaginary line and tell it not to go there,” said Jim Curland, marine program associate with Defenders of Wildlife. “People were very skeptical that you could take an animal, physically move it to an island and expect it to stay.”

In 1999 large numbers of male and juvenile sea otters started moving seasonally into Southern California as they searched for shellfish and other food. Fishermen filed suit against the Fish and Wildlife Service for not moving them north, and the government responded with a biological opinion that said it would jeopardize the population to continually move them out of Southern California and limit the expansion of their range.

Historically, southern sea otters inhabited waters from Oregon to Baja California, numbering 16,000 in the 19th century. They were nearly wiped out by fur traders who hunted them for their pelts, and by the early 1900s just a small remnant colony of 50 survived along the coast of Big Sur. In 1977 they were protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Since then, sea otters have made a slow recovery and today number about 2,800 in California. But as they have exhausted food sources along the Central Coast, wildlife officials now believe the only way for their population to continue its recovery is to allow them to venture wherever they want.

“The goal is to have sea otters really functioning as part of the near-shore marine ecosystem,” Carswell said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is asking for public comments on the plan in the next 60 days. The decision could be made final by 2012.

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--Tony Barboza

Photo: A sea otter dines on shellfish in Monterey Bay. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times.

Peter Douglas, California Coastal Commission chief, will retire

Peter Douglas, an aggressive opponent of development on the California coast who helped write the state's landmark Coastal Act, announced his retirement Wednesday after 26 years as executive director of the California Coastal Commission.

Douglas, 68, who has been fighting lung cancer since last spring, told the panel he will go on sick leave Monday and will retire on Nov. 1.

The executive has been the muscle behind the agency in charge of enforcing the nation’s strongest coastal protection law and has spent 41 years working to guarantee public access to the state’s 1,100-mile coastline while keeping it largely undeveloped.

In remarks at a public meeting in Watsonville, Douglas said he planned to hand off leadership of the agency to Senior Deputy Director Charles Lester, who has been filling in while Douglas has undergone aggressive chemotherapy. But it is ultimately up to the 12-member panel to choose a new leader.

Douglas began his crusade for coastal protection in the 1970s as a legislative aide and consultant, helping to draft Proposition 20, which voters passed in 1972, and the 1976 state Coastal Act, which created the Coastal Commission. After serving as the agency’s chief deputy, he was named its third executive director in 1985.

Since then, Douglas is credited with transforming the start-up panel into an influential land-use agency that has final say in nearly all development proposed along the coastline, from single-family homes, docks and beach stairways to the largest projects, such as subdivisions, marinas, highways and power plants.

Douglas is beloved by conservationists, but he has been a lightning rod for developers and property owners who have fought with the agency over beachside projects and public access to the shoreline. Local governments often have clashed with Douglas over his agency’s challenges to what they consider local matters, such as beach curfews, beach pathways and parking restrictions. He has served under both Democratic and Republican governors and survived a number of attempts at ousting him.

State Senate President Darrell Steinberg said the preservation of California’s magnificent coastline wouldn’t have happened without Douglas, whom he called “the driving force in creating the nation’s most comprehensive coastal protections.”

“Without Peter’s unwavering voice for environmental protection and public access,” Steinberg said in a statement, “millions of Californians and visitors from around the world would have been denied the enjoyment of our pristine coastline.”

Douglas was not available for comment Wednesday, but he released a biography and personal comments that highlighted key accomplishments, including empowering citizen activists across the state, opening new public accessways to the coast and, in the 1980s, requiring the Jonathan Club, a club then made up only of white males, to open its doors to women and people of color in order to expand its Santa Monica facility.

Speaking in June at a conference in Sacramento about the Coastal Commission, Douglas told a room packed with both admirers and foes that he was proudest of subdivisions that were not built and wetlands that were not filled.

He said one of the agency's biggest challenges will be “implementing a visionary law in a myopic political world.”

Protecting the coast “is a job that’s never done, it’s always being done,” he said. “It’s what we owe future generations. We’re not going away.”

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-- Tony Barboza

Photo: Peter Douglas listens during public comment at a 1996 Coastal Commission hearing in Huntington Beach. Credit: Los Angeles Times