From the Chair
Launching a New Strategy to Aid Ocean Biodiversity

By Douglas P. Wheeler
Chairman, California Biodiversity Council

The Pacific Ocean rolls into the coast of California for 1,100 miles, supplying bountiful food, livelihood, natural resources, transportation, and recreation.

Its aesthetic beauty inspires our minds and restores our souls. The ocean's importance is inestimable.

Depletion of ocean biodiversity robs us of a precious natural heritage. But protecting ocean water quality and biodiversity is a long-term commitment for many state agencies, working in collaboration with local efforts and our federal partners.

At the Forefront
Ocean resources are at the forefront of California's environmental concerns this year. The ocean is the focus of an international conference in San Diego March 24-27, which the Resources Agency organized with the Coastal Zone Foundation. Moreover, Governor Wilson's new budget includes a Coastal Initiative with provisions for improving water quality, enhancing beaches, restoring wetlands and helping fund local coastal plans -- all to the betterment of the ocean.

Over the past two years the Resources Agency has developed a first-of-its-kind overview of environmental and economic problems confronting ocean resources and a strategy for addressing them (see story, above).

Ocean Agenda
Participants at the conference will have an opportunity to review the recommendations of the ocean agenda and to hear papers of 280 contributors from around the world. From the conference may well come an action agenda and a heightened sense of shared responsibility for the fate of the world's oceans.

Here at home, Californians will be given an opportunity to extend seaward the concepts of ecosystem integrity and sustainable development that have come to characterize our approach to management of terrestrial resources.

Starting at the margin of land and sea, where wetlands often provide a natural transition, we can begin to meet our responsibility for stewardship of marine resources.

Douglas P. Wheeler is California's Secretary for Resources