Guaranteeing Sanctuaries

It took only one day for California voters to approve last year’s $776-million park and wildlife bond issue initiative. It will take years to spend that much to buy and improve parkland. The Planning and Conservation League, which helped coordinate the bond campaign, reports good progress in general, despite several setbacks since Proposition 70 was adopted last June.

With some of the bond money, the state acquired 2,760 acres of scenic Hope Valley near South Lake Tahoe that were threatened with urban development. Now the area can remain a popular fishing spot. The state Wildlife Conservation Board has acquired 500 acres in Santa Cruz County to preserve a site on which many rare and endangered animal and plant species live. By the time the state could act, the area had been subdivided and lots were being marketed for residential development.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy gave Glendale $2 million in Proposition 70 money to buy 700 acres of land that will link the city with the Angeles National Forest. Los Angeles County is receiving $14 million for improvements in various local parks and will get other money for land acquisition. Farther south, negotiations are beginning for 1,500 acres that will form a major part of the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park that will be created between Interstate 5 and the Pacific Ocean near the Mexican border.

No land can be condemned for such parks, so the projects depend on finding willing sellers. That has led to several setbacks. The state lost some San Joaquin County land earmarked for purchase with Proposition 70 money because a developer offered more than the state was able to pay after its own appraisal.

Completion of Sanctuary Forest near the Mendocino-Humboldt County line is threatened because the price of the land has gone up as the value of old-growth timber increases. Not only does the land contain serene groves of redwoods and Douglas fir, it also has important king salmon hatcheries in the Mattole River. According to the conservation league, Eel River Sawmills, which owns several parcels of land being sought for Sanctuary Forest, is balking at a sale it earlier agreed to. The league says the timber company is trying to bargain to sell that land only if environmentalists will stop challenging some aspects of its logging operations nearby.

As California’s population grows, so must its parklands. Toward that end, Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) has proposed an $874-million bond issue for either the June or November, 1990, ballot. The dollar figure may shrink once the governor and legislators start negotiating the purposes and size of bond issues for next year’s ballots, but Costa is wise to guarantee park development a place on the agenda. His measure has one advantage that Proposition 70 did not. Proposition 70 let the people who collected signatures to place the bonds on the ballot write their favorite projects into the measure. Costa’s bill returns the setting of park priorities to state officials. If passed, his bill would be a sign that the Legislature is no longer abdicating its responsibility in this area so vital to the state’s environment.