The US Fish & Wildlife Service has announced its new designated critical habitat for the western snowy plover, and they have reduced the area by 40% [USFWS Plover website]. None of the critical habitat in Half Moon Bay has been eliminated.
The reductions were taken primarily as a result of an economic analysis of the impact of the designation
Some 2,859 acres of proposed critical habitat in six units were deleted based on the projected cost of designating critical habitat. An economic analysis prepared by Industrial Economics Inc. projected that critical habitat could cost between $273 million and $645 million, with the biggest costs due to beach recreation losses. More than three-quarters of the loss was found to occur in five proposed California critical habitat units, located on Coronado’s Silver Strand, Morro Bay, Pismo Beach, and two on Monterey Bay.
In addition, 615 acres were deleted because of management plans and commitments—such as Habitat Conservation Plans—and 1,621 acres were deleted because they are covered by military land management plans or national security needs.
The Service also is conducting a status review of the Pacific Coast population of the western snowy plover, to comply with two petitions to de-list the species and also to comply with the requirement that species status be reviewed in five-year intervals. The Service expects to complete that review next spring.
The rule is scheduled to be published Thursday in the Federal Register, and will take effect 30 days after publication.
I wrote a letter about this to US Fish and Wildlife Service that made the following points.First, we are discussing the survival of a species that has been around for at least a couple of million years, while the report admits it is looking at a time period extending up to 2025. We have a duty to imagine that humans, our ancestors, will be living here in a hundred, two hundred, a thousand years, and that these birds should still be here along with them. We owe that to our ancestors, if not the birds themselves.
The report says that 95% of the economic impact is on recreation, then goes on in Jesuitical fashion to enumerate the sorry consequences ("disamenities" is a stupid neologism) of people having to make other choices for where to walk, drive OTVs and ATVs, and ride horses. This is an amazingly lame analysis because those things do not belong on our beaches. Population pressure will make these things disappear in due time. Some consideration for preserving small swathes of beach near where pedestrians, sunbathers, and surfers are causes little inconvenience, as we in Half Moon Bay who share our beaches can attest.
The report frequently mentioned lost "opportunity costs," but failed to once use the equally valid economic term "substitution effect," which is how we all make daily economic decisions--i.e. Buy this instead of that, go here instead of there, normal everyday human decision making, no big deal at all. So under the guise of creating recreation opportunities, Fish and Game is setting up business and developers to profit from this rule change.
ken king