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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And we are talking about the 30 by 30 movement. You might not be familiar with what this means, 30 by 30, but you will be at the end of this show. To join me in explaining what's going on, we have Dan Seely with the North Coast Environmental Center. We have Matt Simmons, Staff Attorney at EPIC. And we have Josefina Barrantes, 30 by 30 at EPIC.

BARRANTES:

Hi everyone, nice to be here.

WHEELER:

All right. So, Dan, I'm going to pitch it to you first. 30 by 30, broadly, what does this mean? And then we can go into kind of the historical roots of the movement.

SEELY:

Sure, thank you for letting me weigh in here. I've been happy to be on the local 30 by 30 Far Northern California we call ourselves and several partners are working on that. So a little bit about the background of this. It's funny, I was talking with Tom earlier, the first time we talked about 30 by 30 was maybe a year or two ago when California first signed this legislation. We're all a little cynical. Well, what does that really mean? Are they going to count like a tree in a parking lot of a shopping mall is protected or what are we talking? So we were really looking at much higher priorities for protection and restoration than that, obviously. I think it's helpful to look at the origins of 30 by 30.

WHEELER:

Well, to Dan, before we even get there, 30 by 30, I'll do a rough definition and then let you fill in where I get wrong. So this is a conservation movement that seeks to protect and what the word protect is a little bit up in the air, but it seeks to protect 30% of our lands and waters with like some robust conservation protections by the year 2030. Did I get that right?

SEELY:

Right, that's right. And also there's restoration. So if there's pieces of this where maybe it's protected lands, but it's been kind of trash logging and we can protect it better than it can also be for protection lands that we protect as well. Yeah, that's right.

WHEELER:

You're right. Okay, we have this goal 30 by 30. What is the historical roots of this? How did we get to deciding a somewhat arbitrary number 30% of our lands? Why this? In

SEELY:

That's a really important question. So some of the groups in California, we're really drilling down on some very specifics, but to take the beginning of this, I think it's helpful. This really started, I was very honored to be able to talk with E.L. Wilson, the late great environmentalist, conservationist, and entomologist who wrote a book called Half Earth several years ago, and I talked to him about that. And this is a quote from him. I'm going to read a little bit here. The crucial factor in the life and death of species is the amount of suitable habitat left to them. As reserves are reduced in area, the diversity within them declines with mathematically predictable degree swiftly, often immediately, and for a large fraction forever. He was talking about the need for biodiversity. He was talking about half of the earth, not just the United States. California tacked onto that with our 30 by 30. They enlarged our goals beyond just biodiversity. And if you look at the legislation, it's constant, repeated in the legislation, as well as access, voices for indigenous peoples. The California version also talks about working lands. It's not just wilderness and preservation. So just kind of keep that in context. So there's wiggle room there for the state when they're making some things here, whether we are happy about that or not.

The other thing is I'd like to mention is that there is a report that was done by NatureServe, which is the nationwide collector of data. And they use the California data to look at kind. And we have them on one of our 30 by 30 calls looking at what some of their data shows. So some of this is data driven as far as biodiversity. We're looking at the science, not the other kind of issues that are related to the goals. Their conclusions were after 50 years of collecting data with a major, every state and the federal government's data, it revealed an alarming conclusion that 34 percent of plants, 40 percent of animals are at risk of extinction and 41 percent of ecosystems are at risk of range wide collapse. So that's pretty alarming. And that just came out this year. That's 50 years of data. And it's really the only data that's been taken on this scale and this amount. It's not perfect data. It doesn't include private lands for the most part because they're not part of the partners. But it does include nonprofits, places who own lands like the Nature Conservancy and Redwoods, say the Redwoods League. And I can give you a little bit about what how that means to California. But I just wanted to kind of mention that.

WHEELER:

I think that there are a couple of interesting themes to tease out here. One of which is that this has its roots in a pretty traditional area of conservation, which is biodiversity defense. So coming from E.O. Wilson, this is how we're going to preserve life on earth is that we're going to set aside areas that are for other life besides just humans. And that's necessary for so much life to be free of human interference, to have wild processes take place, to have the space necessary for life to thrive on our planet. And the other interesting bit is to me is how this movement has evolved.

As you said, California has broadened the scope of this. It's not just biodiversity defense in California's interpretation of what 30 by 30 means. It is indigenous access and the ability to cultivate lands in a traditional manner to be able to use resources from those lands that were historically used by indigenous people here in California. Our public lands, our wild lands are often also places of recreation. And so this might cause some degree of conflict with biodiversity as human use for recreation can impact biodiversity and its protection of clean water and carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration. This feels like kind of a modern addition for environmentalism. Everything is being thought of as relating to the climate crisis as it should.

We're packing a lot of things into the 30 by 30 movement here. Safina, hopefully you can give us a little bit of history with how California decided to join this movement. Then we can talk about where we are now with organizing. And so first, the background of Governor Newsom and the incorporation of this as a goal for the state.

BARRANTES:

Yeah, so Governor Newsom gave an executive order for 30 by 30 to protect 30% of California land and conserve it for not only biodiversity, but as you said, also recreation and tribal usage. This can include land back. Basically, this order is we have to conserve it. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the Power Nature Coalition. So the Power Nature Coalition is a coalition that is seeking to hold the government accountable for actually conserving 30% of the land by 2030. So it's not just something they say, but it's something that actually happens. Power Nature Coalition is made up of different environmental groups, tribal members, community members and land trusts and different community groups that seek to have interest in their area and projects that they want uplifted with funding and legislation in order to protect them.

WHEELER:

You are an EPIC person, but you are also a Power in Nature person too, because you are one of the facilitators of this larger coalition. Can you talk to us about how the coalition's broken up and your area of focus within this larger statewide movement again?

BARRANTES:

Yeah, so the Power in Nature Coalition has different working groups. There's a public lands working group, a freshwater working group. These groups focus on different policy related to them. This could mean making comment letters to the government on various legislation as well as the regional groups, particularly the far northern California regional group that I'm a part of. There's ones for all the regions in California. This one's of particular interest for especially Humboldt County, Del Norte, Mendocino, Shasta County. We talk about the different issues in our area and the projects that people want to work on in their groups.

WHEELER:

Yeah. So what does conservation mean in this 30 by 30 kind of rubric? What are we like trying to pass regulations that like stop the timber industry from being bad, or, or is it more focused on land acquisition through private markets? Is it, what is, what is the totality of projects look like?

BARRANTES:

So it can look like many things. For tribes it can look like land back, it can look like easements and co-management, and for other projects it can look like having access to recreation and easements for recreation. And it can also look like having dams come down on, say, the Eel River, which is one of the projects which is bringing Scott Dam down and just restoring the area as well as land acquisition and also restoration.

WHEELER:

So land acquisition, this is often something we talk about here at EPIC as changing colors on a map, right? We have, we have areas, discrete areas that we want to increase the conservation status. A good way of thinking about this is wilderness areas. We want to create more things akin to wilderness areas, areas that are protected with pretty robust protections that limit the ability for humans to go in there and do extractive, harmful activities on those lands. So that, that's like a pretty exciting and pretty in line with historic traditional environmentalism, right? The, the Wilderness Act dates back to the 1960s, I believe. Dan, you probably know best. Yeah. I've gained a head shake.

I also like the incorporation of kind of more modern ideas of how we can protect land. This idea of land back. So trying to transfer title of lands back to the indigenous peoples who once inhabited those areas, who claim those lands as their ancestral territory. That could be really cool, right? We've seen that work very successfully up here on the North coast with the Yurok tribe and the Blue Creek acquisition, 50,000 acres of land that they acquired from Green Diamond Resource Company around a absolutely vital salmon stronghold in the Klamath river, as well as a totally important cultural site for the Yurok people. So it was this twofer. We got to protect a salmon stronghold and a super important cultural site.

So this is, this is some of the excitement. This is some of the ways that environmentalism is adapting to the times. We, we're, we are embracing kind of a broader idea of what conservation could mean. And I think that that's one of the really wonderful things about this 30 by 30 movement. So Josefina, you said that there are a lot of different groups participating in this. You have a facilitation role. You're often organizing these big group calls where a diverse set of environmental groups, tribal nations, individual activists participate. Matt, you participate in some of these calls. You have individual projects that you're trying to get forwarded through the 30 by 30 movement. Can you talk about that?

SIMMONS

Yeah, happy to. So long time listeners of the show will be familiar with the Jackson demonstration state forest. Just to recap, Jackson is a state owned coast, Redwood forest in Mendocino County. It's about 48,000 acres. And the purpose of the forest right now is to demonstrate logging, right? So the state of California writes timber harvest plans, sells those timber harvest plans to private timber companies. They go in and cut trees down, and then they theoretically show other timber companies how to do that and how to repeat it. And that mandate goes all the way back to 1947 when the state was really concerned about making sure that the timber industry knew what it was doing in that sort of way.

WHEELER:

The state was really interested, not so much in reducing environmental impacts, but increasing the efficiency, meaning how can we get more bored feet out of forests. So it used to be that we would leave behind kind of a substantial number of trees because we just didn't have good ways to fell them and get them out of the forest. And the state considered that issue, the retention of too much old growth, a problem. So they were like, hey, here's some land, figure out how we can go in and more efficiently slick off ancient redwoods from the forest. A different moment in time, obviously.

SIMMONS

It was a different moment of time, but that legislation, that code language is still what governs the forest ultimately, and hasn't been meaningfully updated since 1947. And so here's the state telling everyone to conserve 30% of its land, spending a lot of money on conservation easements, trying to work out deals with private landowners when they're sitting on 50,000 acres of second growth redwood that is primed to become future old growth redwood if we manage it in the appropriate way.

And so I've been working with the Save Jackson Coalition, which has indigenous partners, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, local environmental groups, local recreation groups, and I don't think we've talked so much about recreation yet, but that's another huge part of 30 by 30 is making sure people have access to nature and making sure that these places have hiking trails and opportunities for people to go visit nature and experience it because it's sort of our collective public right to do so.

WHEELER:

The EcoNews, we're talking about the 30 by 30 movement. The Jackson is the backyard for the towns of Fort Bragg, the towns of Casper, Mendocino, Ukiah, Willits. This is a large piece of public land that allows them to go in and do things that they often can't do on other public lands, like pick mushrooms, ride mountain bikes, ride horses, hike, go birding. You can often go birding on other public lands, but, but you get the point. So it's, this is part of the kind of diverse coalition that, that you've helped to build in the Jackson. And I think that the Jackson again is a really good kind of reflection of this larger 30 by 30 movement, because it has all these disparate parts.

SIMMONS

Yeah, and you just reminded me, there's an area of Jackson called Mushroom Corners that is so famous for mushrooming that I was on a Power in Nature call with an advocate from San Diego who annually drives up to Mendocino County to go mushrooming in Jackson Demonstration State Forest. And he was unaware that CAL FIRE, the agency that manages the forest, was actually planning to do a timber harvest plan that overlapped the area that he liked to go mushrooming in and that our coalition had been working to protect that place and stop that timber harvest plan from going through.

And so it impacts not just local folks, which it obviously does, but it's a state-owned land and so it's really everyone in California's forest. And so where Jackson meets with 30x30 is that it matches up so critically with exactly what the state says they want to do, right? You're looking for biodiversity, we've got Northern Spotted Owl and Coho Salmon. You're looking for carbon storage and sequestration, we've got Coast Redwood Forest, like the ultimate carbon sequestration engine, unless you believe in the sci-fi technology of carbon storage and capture. You want recreation, we've got mountain bike trails and mushroom foraging, people, equestrians ride their horses through there. You want tribal participation, we've got tribes with sacred sites and cultural sites in the forest actively working to defend it.

And so the forest checks all the boxes of the kind of land you'd want and it's already owned by the state of California. No one has to purchase it or do a conservation easement. And still the state is refusing to conserve it in line with 30x30. But I think part of the reason our advocacy has caused the state to backpedal so much is because they kind of recognize that they're not leading the way that they should be on this issue. So...

WHEELER:

Josefina, we have the Far North group that you helped to convene for the Power and Nature Coalition. There are various advocates like Matt as part of the Power and Nature Coalition that come to the coalition with their projects, right? We have Eel River Dam removal. We have protection of Jackson Demonstration State Forest. We have Lake Earl protections up in Del Norte County. We have Rainbow Ridge amongst the various projects that have been highlighted by the Power and Nature Coalition. How does the coalition work to forward the protection of these sorts of lands? What is the sort of work that you do with legislators, with decision makers to amplify the voice of folks like Matt?

BARRANTES:

Yeah, so we work together and coordinate really to make sure that people get their voices uplifted for their projects. We're all able to connect them with the people that they need to be connected to for funding land acquisition if they want somebody to buy the land, like a land trust to buy land for a project. In addition to this, we also do a little bit of lobbying.

We recently went to Sacramento for Protect California Day and the coalition met with lobbyists in their respective districts to ask about funding for 30 by 30 in general, as well as tell the legislators and legislative directors that we were able to meet with about the various projects in our districts that were of importance, like JDSF and Scott Dam removal in the Eel River, to put it on their radar and really make sure that they know that these projects are important to the people in the area, not just the coalition, but also just the residents in the district, their constituents, and that it's not just important for recreation, but also conservation of biodiversity that is so vital for California.

WHEELER:

So one of the things I like about the coalition is using a metaphor of like a choir, right? Where if it was just kind of Matt singing by himself about the beauty of JDSF, his voice is not going to be very loud. But no offense, Matt, I know that you have a beautiful soprano voice. I have no idea if you're a soprano, but beautiful voice all the same. But Matt together with the folks who have been working to defend Rainbow Ridge, together with activists in Del Norte County, with folks in Trinity County and Siskiyou County and Tehama and all these other areas, together we form a choir, we form a chorus, and we all sing together.

God, I'm really just abusing this metaphor for all of its worth. But we are louder together. And when somebody needs to advocate for Rainbow Ridge, Matt is also there to advocate for Rainbow Ridge, even though it's not really his project. So this is like the idea of coalitional work, which is so wonderful, and why I think the coalition has made such an impact.

SIMMONS

far. Well, and it can go beyond just our northern region, right? So there's a whole desert working group down in the Mojave, and they were being excluded from a lot of discussions because I guess people felt like deserts don't matter in terms of conservation. And EPIC does not historically do any work in deserts because we're up here in Northwest California. But I signed on to a letter saying that desert groups should be included in these conversations, right? It doesn't make any sense to exclude them just because of their geographic area.

And so I'm hopeful that this coalition can actually build sort of a statewide cross-pollination of people meeting each other and learning about their issues. I didn't know anything about those issues before I was in this coalition and then got to talk to them. Dan is trying to say something.

WHEELER:

Yeah, dear. The following periods in which the

SEELY:

Along those lines, what's been really wonderful is that the far northern group that we're involved with includes all the way to Mount Shasta. And there are resources and people there. We've not had an opportunity to reach out in a meaningful way for a very long time. And there are some resources there that are really vital that are not on the front page because they're really a more isolated group. And they also have some much more major political challenges in that area, especially Shasta County, than we have on the coast. So for us to be able to work with them is an amazing opportunity as well. Michelle is on our calls every week and is such a strong advocate for that. So I agree with you. This is a great time to kind of look beyond our normal boundaries.

And it's interesting that Matt talks about deserts too because the data shows in the United States, we all look at the megafauna. I mean, I'm as guilty as anybody. I love all of those beautiful birds and mammals and all those things. But in reality, the most at risk species are things like tacti in the desert. And they're like freshwater invertebrates, which are the basic food source for everything up above it. So we only concentrate on our favorite spotted owl. We're going to miss all these other needs that if we're going to get to 2050 with biodiversity, we need to really look very broadly, both geographically as well as species richness to achieve these goals. So we have some amazing opportunities here.

As Josephine has said, those lobby days in Sacramento are critical because the money is short this year. The governor is having to make some really tough decisions between social services, really important social services and environmental issues. And we need to have as good a voice as we can there to make sure we are heard and we are specific on the needs and the priorities, which is the priority setting for this group is something I've been very impressed with.

WHEELER:

So, Dan, when this was first announced, I think a lot of folks like us were perhaps skeptical at the seriousness of this commitment. It was initially California's 30 by 30 movement was proposed, as Josefina said, through an executive order by Governor Newsom. That executive order has slowly been codified into California law through various legislative enactments. And here we actually have the state proposing hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars towards lands protection, which is remarkable.

And Josefina, I want to get your input on this because I know that the state of California is in a different economic place now than it was when 30 by 30 first kind of took root, right? Which was in the beginning of the pandemic days, the state of California had robust budget surpluses. Tech industry was booming with all of the work from home. Now we have a pretty significant budget shortfall. The governor has just come back with his budget revise. How does it look in Sacramento for 30 by 30 work these days?

BARRANTES:

Yeah, so the May revise recently came out last week. Just some context, the May revise is the governor's proposed budget based on projected revenue, which of course we don't know until October, but this is just his proposed budget. It was looking pretty positive because it didn't look like there were significant cuts at first to the climate budget. However, a lot of these budgets were punted to bonds that will later be voted on in 2024 and won't be available till 2025. And the issue with 30 by 30 is that we need the funding now to protect the land that we need to by 2030. And we need to be able to make a difference now because the wildlife, the megafauna, the microfauna, the land can't wait till we can start these projects in a couple of years. We need the funding now and it's vital. So these bonds, we're happy we're not completely cut out of the budget, but it's not ideally what we want.

WHEELER:

And it's not ideal. Although California does have a wonderful history of approving these kinds of bonds. So I think if it was put before voters, my political crystal ball would say that they would likely pass, given the largesse of California voters for protecting the environment. Well, so we have until 2030, as you said. Can you kind of chart out a path? What does it look like? Where are we now? How much of California is conserved? How much do we still need to go?

SEELY:

I believe that California is better than most states as far as, and largely that's because a huge amount of California is under the federal, like whether it's National Forests and Wilderness Areas or BLM, the National Monuments or National Parks or State Parks. So we are lucky in California. But on the other hand, if you look at the data that the NatureServe provided, every single map they show of every state in the country about whether it's the opportunity, the amount of biodiversity, the risk, California is a huge hotspot. If we screw up California, we screw up the ability to protect this area for the future generations whether it's 2030, 2050, or 5050.

So we really need to take these opportunities. And the good thing is, I think the legislature and the governor and even the state representatives and counties, especially here in Humboldt, we have very strong support for this. It's the reality of the budget. So we have to support them and we support you in making sure that this money is there. They need that support. So when they go back to their constituents, they can say that they're responding to that voice. It doesn't matter whether it's Humboldt County, Siskiyou County, Mendocino, wherever. So I think our work is really important right now to support them to do the right thing.

WHEELER:

As Dan, as you said, the state of California has so much public land, we have so much forest service land in particular, we are pretty substantially on our way to meet the 30% goal. Wonderful point though of ensuring that we have the correct lands conserved so that we can protect the wide diversity of biodiversity and to ensure that we protect the biological hotspots where biodiversity is really very prevalent, like the Klamath Mountains, a huge biological hotspot, second richest biodiversity density in the United States. I think that we are somewhere around 25% of our way towards conserving lands and waters of California, towards that 2030 goal. So we're substantially there, but there's still a lot of work to be done in the time we have left.

SIMMONS:

Just two things on the numbers. So I think we are farther along on lands than we are on waters, and waters is another big point. And then also, Dan said this at the very beginning, but also theoretically, we'll need a lot of funding for restoring lands, right? Because just because you change the color on the map doesn't actually change the reality on the ground. And some of these lands are gonna need restoration work, and so funding for that is also essential. And...

WHEELER:

So shout out to my friends at Save the Redwoods League, because their work is a great inspiration for what could be done in 20 by 30 movement, the Redwoods Rising Program. We have a lot of area of land that is like theoretically protected, right? It's in a national park. What could be more protective than a national park, right?

But it's historically degraded land because of the timber industry. It is old plantations that are overly thick, that the species composition is off. And Save the Redwoods League, in partnership with state parks and national parks and other stakeholders are going in and they are doing forest restoration projects. And they are restoring a better species balance in these forests. They are thinning the forest to a more appropriate density. And they are, in thinning these forests, they're also going to increase the carbon sequestration potential of these forests.

Because instead of a bunch of small trees that are all impacting each other and restricting growth, we're going to have fewer larger trees able to just put on tremendous amounts of carbon. So really cool program. Shout out. Save the Redwoods League. I'm going to be doing it on Friday.

SIMMONS

And a program like that, it costs money and it doesn't turn a huge profit because you're sort of purposefully choosing.

WHEELER:

It doesn't talk to me.

SIMMONS

You're purposefully choosing the less profitable trees to cut down, right? And so making sure that the state continues to support that sort of conservation work that doesn't have the profit of rain.

WHEELER:

And the Jackson is also another area where forest restoration is going to be necessary because it suffered the same problem as Redwood National Park, which is the state mismanaged this land, created forest plantations that are too dense, that are packed with dug fir because that was the species of choice at that time and don't have the native diversity of plant species that we would expect from a forest like this.

And so it's going to be necessary to do some measure of restoration of the Jackson Demonstration State Forest as well. So again, the Jackson, another wonderful example of like how 30 by 30 could work. So Governor Newsom, Secretary Crowfoot, I hope you're listening because let's protect the Jackson. I'm sure we'll be back on next year to talk about the progress that we've made towards conserving 30% of California by the year 2030. So again, thank you so much to Josefina and Matt from EPIC and Dan Seeley, another wonderful friend from the North Coast Environmental Center, our sister organization in conspiracy and collaboration for the protection of the North Coast.

Thanks Dan. Thank you. All right. Join us again on this channel next week, this time and channel next week for more news from the North Coast.