Chairman, California Executive Council on Biological Diversity
For the last 30 years, and particularly since
the first Earth Day in 1970, we have enacted at all levels of government a host of laws
de signed to prohibit and regulate activities and substances harmful to the
environment. These laws have been utilized to a generally positive environmental
effect, and, as a result, most Californians are reassured that there exists adequate
protection for our extraordinary natural assets.
At the same time, however, there is a growing belief that the vast web of environmental rules and regulations comes at a substantial cost and promotes only piecemeal solutions to complicated ecological problems.
Few areas of natural resource policy illustrate the disparity between intended effect and reality better than wildlife conservation predicated on the federal Endangered Species Act. Founded on the best science available in 1973, the law has become little more than a warning system that sounds when a particular bird, plant, or animal is nearing extinction.
That is why Governor Wilson has challenged the status quo in natural resource protection and given California an unprecedented, integrated strategy based on conservation of "ecosystems." That is why he has fully endorsed the objectives and principles of the Executive Council on Biological Diversity.
The Governor's innovative Natural Communities Conservation Planning pro gram (NCCP), grounded in biodiversity conservation, is the most advanced ex ample of ecosystem planning in the nation. Implemented in the highly stressed Southern California coastal sage scrub habitat, the program seeks to reconcile the demands of conservation and economic development by anticipating and preventing the gridlock that often results from conventional listings of individual threatened or endangered plants or animals under the Endangered Species Act.
It has been endorsed by both Presidents Bush and Clinton. The president of the Nature Conservancy says the program's message is cooperation, not conflict.
A major lesson of Governor Wilson's strategy to conserve California's biological diversity is the need to employ new standards and new criteria in judging contemporary environmental progress. Success in meeting the complex challenges of ecosystems and economies cannot be measured simply by the number of new laws and regulations, and new bureaucracies to implement them. The need now is for policies and programs that build on our substantial experience and that promote cooperative, effective solutions using existing legal authority. This, of course, is at the heart of the work of the California Executive Council on Biological Diversity.
Douglas P. Wheeler is California's Secretary for Resources.