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Greens buy a farm - In a
controversial move, a conservation group has bought 9,200 acres of
Delta farmland
(Note: Was this a coup of taxpayer dollars, or what? TNC strikes
again.)
December 5, 2001
By Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer
The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco, California
To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@sfchronicle.com
Staten Island, Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, California -- This entire 9,200-acre island is a corporate farm, annually pumping out hundreds of thousands of bushels of corn, wheat and tomatoes. There are no groves of hoary oaks, no native bunch grass uplands, no marshes.
It's not the kind of property, in other words, that tends to excite
conservationists.
And yet, some conservationists are excited -- specifically those who
work for the California Nature Conservancy, an
organization that usually buys and preserves large tracts of the
state's most endangered ecosystems.
In a controversial move, the conservancy has purchased Staten
Island with a $35 million government grant. The organization
doesn't plan to restore the island to wetland and riparian forest, as
some conservationists would have them do; it's going to farm it.
The grant was administered by CalFed, a joint state
and federal agency that was formed several years ago to guarantee an
equitable split of the state's water among urban, environmental and
agricultural interests. CalFed also restores wildlife habitat and
fisheries in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their shared
delta.
Chris Unkel, a senior field representative for the conservancy, acknowledges that the move "pushes the envelope" of conservation theory. But that strategy, he says, is dictated by necessity.
Wildlife cannot be protected by simply buying discrete parcels of
pristine habitat, in part because there isn't enough left, Unkel says.
Instead, wildlife has to be encouraged on land that is farmed or
otherwise developed to one degree or another.
Wildlife already thrives to a very significant degree on the ranch. Up
to 20,000 sandhill cranes spend the winter on Staten Island, as well
as hundreds of thousands of waterfowl and shorebirds.
The conservancy will maximize the wildlife carrying capacity of the
farm through such techniques as flooding harvested fields to create
the kind of habitat that migratory birds like, Unkel said.
"This is basically going to be a demonstration farm," Unkel
said, as he inspected the property on a recent cold and blustery day.
"We intend to show you can have both wildlife and a viable
agricultural operation."
But some environmentalists are uneasy about the conservancy's bold new
move, saying that the organization has strayed dangerously far from
its original mandate of identifying, buying and protecting threatened
wildlands.
Further, they say, the use of public funds to buy a commercial
enterprise for a private organization -- even a nonprofit
organization like the Nature Conservancy -- is wrong.
"If an asset is purchased with public money, that asset should be
retained for the public," said Huey Johnson, a former executive
director of the California Nature Conservancy, a past state resources
secretary and the president of Defense of Place, a Marin County
environmental organization.
"That certainly isn't the case with this acquisition,"
Johnson said. "There'll be virtually no public access."
Johnson also questioned the conservancy's comfortable relationship
with large landowners and government regulatory agencies.
"A primary responsibility of environmental organizations is to
criticize government, thereby keeping government honest," he
said. "It has been a long time since the conservancy has
criticized anything government has done. They're seemingly more
concerned about money -- about picking up huge blocks of land at
public expense."
But Unkel countered that the Nature Conservancy has never been a
litigious, or even confrontational, organization. Historically, he
said, the group has sought consensus.
"We've always maintained cordial relationships with landowners
and the agencies," he said, noting that the group has preserved
more than 1 million acres of land in California. "That's how
we're able to get things done."
Deals like Staten Island, Unkel said, are essential if wildlife is to
thrive on a landscape-size scale rather than in isolated pockets.
"There simply isn't enough money to buy all the land you would
need to accommodate migratory waterfowl, for example," he said.
"If we can't get farmers to sign on to wildlife-friendly farming,
we're in trouble. And they aren't going to sign on unless they're sure
they can run a profitable operation."
Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation,
concurred with Unkel, and said cropland can be excellent wildlife
habitat.
"Well-managed farmland can be even better habitat than land taken
out of (crop) production," he said. "Without flooded rice
and corn fields, you'd have a lot of hungry waterfowl in this state.
Wildlife agencies often have enough money to buy land, but not enough
to manage it. If you can keep the owner producing on the land and work
with him to maximize wildlife value -- that's your best
scenario."
For some environmentalists, the most troubling aspect of the Staten
Island deal is its financial structure.
"Essentially, this is a very specialized kind of conservation
easement -- a commercial use of a property with certain management
strictures that benefit the environment," said Carl Pope, the
executive director of the Sierra Club.
"From that basic perspective, this seems like a pretty good
deal," Pope said. "But when you buy such an easement, the
price is invariably less than the purchase price for the property. So
you have to ask if the return to the public is fair in this case. It
seems like the state should have bought the land, then sold it to a
farmer with an environmental easement, or perhaps leased it to the
conservancy. I'm not sure it's appropriate for the conservancy to own
this property and run it for a profit."
Unkel said that Staten Island will be managed for wildlife more than
for maximum monetary return and that all profits will be plowed back
into farm operations.
From a larger perspective, said the Farm Bureau's Dave Kranz, anything
that keeps farms producing crops must be considered a public benefit.
"County revenue in rural areas can be severely impacted when
croplands are taken permanently out of production and put into
preserves," he said. "It's getting to be a real
problem."
Patrick Wright, the director of CalFed, said he feels there is little
merit to the argument that government funds should be used only for
the purchase of lands open to the public.
"There are plenty of cases where environmental organizations have
bought land and excluded the public from it," Wright said.
"It all depends on the specific goals of each project."
And, Wright added, social realities must also be taken into
consideration. People in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, he
noted, have perspectives that are different from those of Bay Area
residents.
"The fact of the matter is that we can't afford to displace the
agricultural community in the Central Valley," he said. "We
don't have the money, and we certainly don't have the political
support. The only reasonable option is forge collaborative
partnerships with agriculture for projects with multiple benefits.
Staten Island is a case in point."
Copyright 2001 San Francisco Chronicle
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