BLM’s new plan for northwest California marks new and historic improvements in federal conservation planning and Tribal engagement
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) California State Director Joseph Stout is expected to approve the Northwest California Integrated Resource Management Plan (NCIP) that will direct how the agency’s Arcata and Redding Field Offices will manage more than 380,000 acres (over 593 square-miles) of BLM public lands in Butte, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Mendocino, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity counties for decades to come.
The NCIP is truly historic in that it is first California BLM regional planning document to reference President Biden’s America the Beautiful Initiative and the State of California’s 30×30 initiative. The NCIP provides protections meant to meet the California Natural Resources Agency’s (CNRA) 2022 definition of “conserved”, namely as “Land and coastal water areas within California that are durably protected and managed to sustain functional ecosystems, both intact and restored, and the diversity of life that they support, regardless of surface ownership.”
CalWild and several of our partners worked hard for seven years to convince BLM to issue a final version of the NCIP that protects and improves the existing management of many special areas in the region such as English Ridge in Mendocino County, BLM parcels adjacent to the Trinity Alps Wilderness in the Trinity County, rugged Beegum Creek in Tehama County, and Butte Creek near Chico in Butte County.
CalWild staffer Linda Castro in particular spent countless hours submitting formal proposals to BLM requesting that various important areas covered by the NCIP be protected as “areas of critical environmental concern” (ACEC, a type of land protection that is unique to the BLM). Thanks in no small part to CalWild’s efforts, the NCIP provides significant conservation and/or cultural heritage protections for 87,890 acres of ACECs, including 17 new ACECs totaling 64,200 acres and improved protections for 23,690 acres of existing ACECs.
The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was established by the Wild and Scenic Rivers (WSR) Act of 1968 and offers the strongest protections available under federal law for streams from new dams, major diversions, and other developments. While Congress must pass a law to declare a stream a WSR, agencies may use plans like NCIP to identify streams as WSR candidates and protect them. This protection may last until Congress can vote to either reject, change, or adopt the BLM’s WSR recommendations. Thanks to the urgings of CalWild WSR expert Steve Evans and our parts, the final NCIP protects 147.2 miles of streams as eligible WSRs.
The NCIP is also the first BLM plan to adhere to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s new Tribal engagement policies. Fortunately, both the Arcata and Redding Field Offices have had leaders since the 1990s who are committed to engage authentically with Tribes. CalWild was pleased to hear Tribal representatives praise Arcata and Redding BLM staff for their engagement efforts throughout the long NCIP process.
Best of all perhaps from CalWild’s long-term perspective is that the NCIP provides 2-3 special protective planning designations on lands included in Representative Jared Huffman’s and Senators Alex Padilla’s and Laphonza Butler’s Northwest California Wilderness, Recreation, and Working Forests Act, HR 3700 and S. 1776. The overlapping agency protections provided by NCIP are welcome given that the bill has still not become law despite many years of effort.
If trends over recent decades are any indication, the very welcome NCIP may stay in place for 20 years or more until the BLM determines that enough has changed to warrant a revision.
