Biodiversity Briefs

Coles Levee Wins

The Coles Levee Ecosystem Preserve in Kern County, which is managed jointly by the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) and Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO), was honored Sept. 29 with a 1994 Innovations in State and Local Government Award and a $100,000 grant from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Ford Foundation. Coles Levee is both the only conservation program in the nation and the only recipient of any kind from California to win the award.

In a ceremony in Washington, D.C., Vice President Al Gore presented the award to Secretary for Resources Douglas P. Wheeler, DFG Director Boyd Gibbons, and Ron Rempel, a DFG environmental specialist and a leader in establishing the 6,000-acre preserve in southwestern Kern County.

Governor Pete Wilson dedicated the oil-producing lands for a preserve in 1992 after ARCO agreed to manage them as a protected habitat for listed species, including the Tipton kangaroo rat, the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, San Joaquin antelope squirrel, and the San Joaquin kit fox. In return, ARCO receives mitigation credits to offset the effects of oil exploration elsewhere on the company's 500,000 acres in the region.

Klamath Gets Program

The University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) will pilot a biodiversity educational program in 10 Northern California counties of the Klamath Province to begin early in 1995.

The program will be funded through the state Resources Agency on behalf of the California Executive Council on Biological Diversity. The state intends to provide $125,000 for local educational programs to help stimulate projects that maintain or enhance biodiversity the variety of living things that inhabit an area.

"We will be responding by providing money for local grassroots groups that need educational programs to help accomplish their goals for biodiversity," said Pete Passof, who will direct the program for the UCCE.

Local bioregional and watershed groups that participate in biodiversity related activities in the Klamath Province may submit proposals for funding of educational programs. Proposals must be developed locally and sponsored by a Co operative Extension adviser or specialist within the Klamath Province, including Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Modoc, Siskiyou, Trinity, Shasta, Tehama, and Glenn counties.