Using Process-function Ecology to Urbanize Habitat Conservation Planning

1. Using Process-function Ecology to Urbanize Habitat Conservation Planning Regional Comprehensive Plan Task Force Meeting March 28, 2005 Ashwani Vasishth <vasishth@scag.ca.gov>

2. Evolution of HCPs • The Endangered Species Act is written as part of the effort to establish CITES • The phrase “and their habitat” is added during development of the ESA • The “critical habitat designation” portion of the ESA grows into the HCP process • Multispecies HCPs begin to show advantage • California’s Natural Community Conservation Planning Act seeks to get beyond endangered species designations to whole ecological communities

3. HCPs are an additive product of tack-on patch-work development No serious effort has ever been made to design a legislated habitat conservation planning process from the ground-up, based on ecosystem ecology!!!

4. Add to this the fact that Southern California is a unique case, and the requirement for an eco-regional approach to habitat conservation takes on additional urgency

7. Southern California Coastal Sage Scrub NCCP

9. Santa Ana Irvine

10. In Southern California, the Endangered Species Act Is A Necessary but Insufficient Basis for Habitat Conservation Planning • The Urban-suburban-rural divide is ill-defined • Multiple, overlapping and often conflicting jurisdictions and administrative boundaries limit the use that can be made of a “reserve-design” approach • Fragmentary mosaic landscapes disallow contiguity in all but some limited cases

11. We Need to Better Integrate Habitat Conservation Planning and Urban Land Use Planning • Habitat Conservation Planning Must Transcend the Endangered Species Act • Habitat Conservation Planning Must Urbanize Itself • Land Use Planning Must Take An Ecosystem Approach

12. We Need to Move from Habitat Conservation Planning To Eco-regional Management • Beyond setting aside wilderness habitat for preservation, and besides designating habitat for conservation, critical habitat elements must be extensively percolated throughout the regional landscape

13. An ecosystem approach, based on nested scale-hierarchic (process-function) ecology, offers the most effective basis for such an eco-regional planning

14. Elements of an ecosystem approach • Boundaries • Scales • Processes

15. Properties of an ecosystem approach • Scale-hierarchic Organization • Nested Assembly • Rate-dependant Boundaries • Purposive Boundaries • Scale-dependant Structuring • Functional Associations

16. Principles of an ecosystem approach • Using functions, processes and matter-energy-information flows as a basis for describing the topography of any complex planning space Boundaries

17. Principles of an ecosystem approach... • Recognizing that most phenomena found within any complex planning space occur at multiple spatial, temporal and organizational scales--and so can only be known in some multi-scalar way, and then only partially Scales

18. Principles of an ecosystem approach... • Recognizing that nothing is equally connected to everything else--that some few connections, relationships, pathways matter significantly more than others, and these "keystone processes" are apt to change as we change spatial, temporal or organizational scales. Processes

19. An ecosystem management approach would: • Urbanize habitat conservation planning • Ecologize land use planning • Promote wildlife-friendly native vegetation • Plan for bio-geo-chemical and ecological diversity

20. Ashwani Vasishth vasishth@scag.ca.gov Regional Environmental Planner Southern California Association of Governments (213) 236-1908 http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~vasishth