FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 17, 2008

Contact:  Ray Griffiths - 530-333-1299

Placerville – Local environmental organizations are challenging the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors’ approval of an Oak Woodland Management Plan (OWMP) that favors development over protection of the county’s most critical oak woodlands habitat.

In a petition filed in the County’s Superior Court on June 6, 2008 by the Center for Sierra Nevada Conservation (CSNC), El Dorado County Taxpayers for Quality Growth and the California Oak Foundation, the groups charge the Board of Supervisors with breaking an agreement that settled the years-long General Plan litigation, as well as violating the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

In 1996, residents and environmental groups had challenged the Board of Supervisors for adopting a General Plan that failed to provide protection of the county’s water and critical wildlife habitat.  To settle that lawsuit, the county had promised to adopt an Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan (INRMP), which was to include the Oak Woodland Management Plan. The purpose of the OWMP was to protect the most critical oak woodland habitat and provide wildlife habitat connectivity along the Highway 50 corridor. 

The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project (SNEP) report, a Congressionally requested and funded assessment of the status of the Sierra Nevada completed by the a team of University of California and Forest Service scientists in 1996, calls the oak woodlands of the western Sierra Nevada foothills “the most vulnerable” of vegetation types, due to population pressures.

“Not only are they are thumbing their noses at the minimal wildlife habitat protections included in the General Plan, but they are ignoring their earlier settlement agreement,” observed Ray Griffiths, a former county planning commissioner and member of El Dorado County Taxpayers for Quality Growth.

“This plan is a recipe for the systematic destruction of the county’s oak woodlands,” said Karen Schambach, President of the Center For Sierra Nevada Conservation.

In the 2004 revised General Plan Environmental Impact Report, the County incorporated an analysis done on behalf of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection on the projected impacts to oak woodlands in El Dorado County by development under the 1996 General Plan. The study projected substantial fragmentation adjacent to Highway 50 as the area built out. The consultant hired to create the Oak Woodlands Management Plan (OWMP) developed a strategy to purchase conservation easements in corridors through the area to preserve north-south connectivity. However, in the fall of 2007, the Supervisors deleted those portions of the plan and dedicated any mitigation funds towards purchasing conservation easements in isolated grazing lands unlikely to be subject to development pressure. In addition, the mitigation fees were substantially underfunded.

The environmental organizations are asking the court to order the Board of Supervisors to comply with the General Plan requirements for developing the Natural Resources Management Plan, including an Oak Woodland Management Plan that fully mitigates for the loss of oak woodlands to development.