Tidal Salt Marsh and Oat Hay Fields, Sonoma County
Overview
For several years, many agencies and public interests involved in wetlands management and regulation in the San Francisco Bay Area have voiced the need to develop regional wetlands goals. These goals would represent a shared vision of what is needed to ensure the good health of the Bay Area wetlands ecosystems. The process of developing these goals is called the Regional Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project.
The Regional Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project will use available scientific knowledge to identify the types, amounts, and distribution of wetlands and related habitats needed to sustain diverse and healthy communities of fish and wildlife resources in the San Francisco Bay Area. The project will provide a biological basis to guide a regional wetlands planning process for public and private interests seeking to preserve, enhance, and restore the ecological integrity of wetland communities.
Diked Managed Marsh, Sonoma County
Project Rationale
The concept to develop regional wetlands goals is recommended by the Governor's "California Wetlands Conservation Policy" and by the Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's San Francisco Estuary Project. It is also supported by most of the agencies and non-governmental groups with major planning, operational, or regulatory interests in Bay Area wetlands. Some of the regional interests or programs for protecting wetlands resources are listed below. The Regional Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project can provide a common biological basis for these efforts.
Efforts to protect and enhance wetlands in the Bay Area are commonly drivenby the following beliefs. First, the ecological health of the region requiresmore wetlands of higher quality than exist now. Second, as urban developmentcontinues, the amount of land available for wetlands restoration is decreasing.And third, no amount of wetland of any one kind can provide all the desired and necessary functions of wetlands. Therefore, the basic questions the Project will try to answer are: What types and quantities of wetlands are required where, to provide adequate habitat for a diverse and healthy community of fish and wildlife?
Diked Ruderal Bayland, Marin County
What the Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project Will Be
The Project will be based on biological information and consensus of best professional judgment. This means that the goals will be based upon an orderly and documented method of investigation that identifies key questions, assembles a body of knowledge based upon observation and experimentation that addresses these questions, draws conclusions based upon the knowledge, and assesses the uncertainty of the conclusions. Dissenting views of participants, including the public, will be presented. SFEI will play a central role in the coordination of science support for the Project.
The Project will be expressed as one or more narratives and graphics of alternative habitat scenarios with quantitative and qualitative objectives. This will include producing alternative regional wetlands mosaics in a Geographic Information System (GIS) that will be available to agency decision-makers, private interests, and the public. The GIS will be developed and maintained by SFEI as the Bay Area EcoAtlas.
The Project will be flexible to allow for changing scientific understanding, landscape modifications, and public support.
Brackish Tidal Marsh, Solano County
What the Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project Will Not Be
The Project will not be a legal delineation of wetlands, or substitute for detailed investigations of wetlands project sites. It will not dictate wetlands policy or land use regulation for any property. Nor will it require any landowner, public or private, to modify current land uses or practices.
Seasonal Pond and Adjacent Upland, Alameda County
Project History
The need to establish regional wetlands goals emerged initially from discussions among participants of the San Francisco Estuary Project in the early 1990s. Participants in the Estuary Project included representatives of the environmental community, the private sector, and government. The Estuary Project's Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) of June 1993 recommended the preparation of a regional wetlands management plan based on wetlands goals, and recommended that SFEI coordinate such projects. Later that year, SFEI developed a proposal to help establish regional wetlands goals, and the proposal was approved by the California Resources Agency, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Additional impetus to develop regional wetlands goals came from a series of discussions held in 1994 by the California Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Pacific Region, and the National Marine Fisheries Service. These discussions were held to improve interagency coordination and to forge a shared vision of the regional habitat requirements of fish and wildlife. In late 1994, representatives of these agencies began discussions with staff of SFEI that ultimately led to the development of the process embodied by the Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project, i.e., to produce scientifically valid, regional wetlands goals.
Funding for the Wetlands Goals Project began in early 1994. Since then, SFEI has developed background scientific materials about the historical and existing conditions of wetlands in the area. These materials were produced as byproducts of work conducted for San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, Bay-Delta Oversight Council, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Shell Oil Spill Litigation Settlement Trustees, California Resources Agency, United States Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Pacific Region.
Sausal and Diked Seasonal Pond, Alameda County
Geographic Scope
The geographic scope of the Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project includes the four primary sub regions of the San Francisco Bay downstream of the western boundary of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta at Broad Slough: Suisun Marsh and Bay, San Pablo Bay, Central Bay, and South Bay. At this time, the Project pertains primarily to the region's baylands, which include mudflats, existing tidal marsh, tidal marsh channels, and seasonal and other wetlands within diked historical tidal marshlands. Adjacent uplands and subtidal areas will be considered to the extent necessary to develop ecological goals for the baylands.
The Wetlands Ecosystem Goals Project will initially focus on the baylands because they encompass the best understood wetlands, support the most species of special concern, and may represent the best opportunities to restore or enhance regional wetlands resources in the near future. Funding restrictions, a need for solutions to dredging issues, and interagency emphasis on the recovery of salt marsh ecosystem endangered species also explain the initial focus of the goals process on the baylands of the Bay Area. Eventually, the Wetlands Goals Project may expand to include in-stream, riparian, and terrestrial habitats of the Bay Area to facilitate watershed planning and comprehensive estuarine conservation efforts. Ultimately, it may develop wetlands goals for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Seasonal Pond, Alameda County
Who Will Use The Wetlands Ecosystem Goals?
The wetlands ecosystem goals, and the data and other information on which they are based, will be made available to the community at large. Anyone who wants to implement the goals will be invited to do so, but no entity will be required to implement them. In this respect, the goals will be a collective vision, but not a requirement.
The goals should be useful to many entities involved in protecting and improving wetlands. These may include city and county planning departments that wish to better protect wetlands through zoning; open space and park districts; resource conservation districts interested in conducting wetlands restoration or enhancement projects; private landowners seeking to improve wetlands on their properties; and State and Federal resource agencies involved in wetlands regulation or mandated to protect fish and wildlife and their supporting wetland habitats.
Prominent regional agencies and programs are expected to have interest in implementing the wetlands ecosystem goals
Wet Coastal Prairie, Contra Costa County
For more information about the Bay Area Wetland Ecosystem Gaols Project, please contact,
