Experiences and Opportunities in Partnerships

SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS REGIONAL STEWARDSHIP PLANNING

Photographer Andrew P. Hill, on assignment to photograph some Santa Cruz Mountain redwoods after a fire, was accused of trespassing and asked to hand over his negatives. Hill refused, went home, and began a crusade to save the redwoods--founding the Sempervirens Club.

Sempervirens Fund is California’s oldest land trust and the only organization exclusively devoted to permanently protecting the coast redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Stewardship 5.0 – The Idea!

• Sempervirens Fund received $200,000 in grants to support a 2-year stewardship planning for the Santa Cruz Mountain Region

• Money will go toward ‘finishing’ the recently completed Conceptual Area Protection Plan for the Santa Cruz Mountains ~Redwood CAPP by preparing a complimentary and comprehensive stewardship strategy

• CAPP covers 224,000-acre region

• CAPP identifies 100,000 acres of protected lands and prioritizes an additional 39,000 acres of land for protection

• Current region is stewarded by more than 25 agencies & nonprofit organizations

• The required stewardship process will convene landowners and land managers in the Santa Cruz Mountains to discuss current stewardship models, how they can be improved, and how to anticipate future needs and challenges

The Great Park

Goals of the Santa Cruz Mountains Regional Stewardship Planning process

• Build upon the existing momentum among stakeholders developed through the CAPP process

• Seriously think about how to best steward the area after the priority properties identified within the Redwoods CAPP have been protected and the redwood forest is reconnected

• Create a more efficient system for managing connected ecosystems without regard to property boundaries

Hire a Planning and Research Consultant

• Sempervirens Fund will develop a request for proposals (RFP) to solicit bids from resources planning firms

• After the selection process the SSC will deliver:

• professional planning and research consultants

• consultants that can lead the SSC through the exploration, needs, and opportunities for stewardship of the Great Park Planning Region

Stewardship Selection Committee

Participants will examine the opportunities and challenges that will present themselves in the future

• Evaluate the efficacy of the current models of stewardship while anticipating future scenarios

• Create new strategies or systems that respond to anticipated future conditions

• Promote and enhance the regions ecological values, and deal with the challenges of climate change

• Challenge participants to think holistically –along the lines of ecosystems instead of land ownership

Stewardship 5.0 – Activities / Deliverables: Anticipated Outcomes and Evaluation

• Objective I - Create and convene a Stewardship Steering Committee (SSC) to hire a top rate planning consultant(s)

• Invite participation agencies, nonprofits and other resource specialist who have been part of the CAPP steering Committee

• Members of the Peninsula working group

• Select other agencies, organizations, timber companies, farmers, ranchers and private land owners

Project Objectives

Objective II - Explore how other resource areas similar to the size and scope of the Redwood CAPP are managed; and begin to understand how the Santa Cruz Mountains might be stewarded

• The planning consultant will facilitate a series of SSC meetings to synthesize the information gathered

• The SSC will amalgamate the information gathered from these meetings to determine possible ways to steward the region

Project Objectives

• Objective III – SSC will adopt a list of governing principles to guide stewardship planning in the future as well a interim measure that may be implemented in the short term

• Planning consultant will lead a focused discussion and deliver a memorandum of agreement (MOA)

• SSC will review and edit the MOA

• Planning consultant’s final report and MOA presenting a collectively developed vision, guiding principles, interim measure potential funding strategies, and management structures for stewardship of the Redwoods CAPP

Success

• We will consider this project a success if through this process the SSC comes to agreement on the

• Vision

• Guiding Principals

• Interim measures for Stewardship for the region

A gift from the people to the people…

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in,where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." --John Muir