The California Biodiversity Council has launched a series of forums between its members and their regional managers, the men and women who play a vital role in implementing state and federal policies to protect natural resources.
In October, the council held the first regional managers forum in Redding. Additional forums will occur in the various bioregions of the state.
The regional managers forum enables regional leadership from different agencies to
learn about each other's programs and problems. It allows council members and regional
managers to discuss directly how to best pursue the council's goal of sustainable natural
resource management that conserves biological diversity within the context of needed
economic development.
For two years, the council has been holding forums for community groups in conjunction with our quarterly council meetings. Now, we are extending the same opportunity to regional managers, who forge the link between government agencies and communities where resources policies are carried out.
Traditionally, the policies that shape natural resources management have been formulated almost exclusively in Washington, D.C., or Sacramento. Now, however, government agencies are moving away from that "top down" perspective and taking a new, collaborative approach that has great potential for success.
For example, the inventive Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) program in the Southern California coastal sage scrub habitat of the gnatcatcher, and the historic Bay-Delta accord of December 1994 that brought certainty for biological resources and water users, demonstrate the advantages of collaboration on an ecosystem scale.
Instead of imposing "solutions" on those in the field, we are working with directly affected people to foster and support locally developed solutions.
The California Biodiversity Council, which represents local, state, and federal government agencies and policy-makers, seeks to advance this new dynamic by promoting the participation of stakeholders (local government, landowners, environmental community, etc.) in developing cooperative ecosystem management.
Working in their communities, regional managers are a key component in this mission. That's why it is important that regional managers help to determine the ways in which the council can support their efforts and help make their jobs - and the citizen's role - more productive.
To operate effectively, however, managers must be vested with authority to speak for their agency and make binding commitments, including necessary financial resources.
Policy-making through collaboration enlarges the role of the private sector. It also increases the participation of citizens. Last year, for instance, The James Irvine Foundation awarded a $100,000 grant to the Lead Partnership Group, a consortium of 10 local watershed groups in the Klamath Province. The grant enabled the group to do economic planning, including long-term strategies for sustained yield forestry, develop projects, and hold a roundtable discussion of partnerships and forest health with participation of national environmental groups and the timber industry.
Successful collaboration also has been achieved at the watershed level, as demonstrated by the committed local groups that established conservancies to protect Deer and Mill Creeks in Tehama County.
Can the collaborative approach work in an era when we are being required to do more with less? The answer is, "yes." But the techniques we are developing must enable us to approach our tasks more efficiently. We are finding that working collaboratively at the roots of problems and employing an ecosystem approach can eliminate the need for many of the costly and narrowly focused regulations that have characterized past efforts.
Our new mission is more comprehensive, but we have new tools and techniques to operate more productively and cost effectively. CERES, the on-line system created by the California Resources Agency, brings a world of information to resource managers and decision-makers.
California Biodiversity Council members recognize that the programs and objectives we espouse will be fully achieved not in Sacramento or Washington, but in the field by regional managers and their staffs. It is our duty to be sure they are equipped to meet these worthy goals.