Conservationists present plan to protect SoCal wildlife pathways

The Associated Press
Article Launched: 03/19/2008 05:39:27 PM PDT
LOS ANGELES—A plan to protect pathways between wildlife habitats in Southern California's national parks and other public lands was announced Wednesday.
More than five years in the making, the South Coast Missing Linkages Project assembled by a partnership of government and private conservation agencies, aims to protect 69 travel routes for animals in an area that stretches from Santa Barbara County to south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The partnership seeks to protect animals that are widely dispersed or have small populations, including mountain lions, badgers, bobcats, desert tortoises and bighorn sheep.
"For wildlife to survive, you need linkages, because the protected areas aren't big enough," said Ray Sauvajot, chief of planning, science and resource management for the National Park Service. Currently about half of the land the group identified is already owned by conservation agencies. The new plan focuses primarily on what to do with the other half. -

"What we'd like to see is them protected in perpetuity," she said.
But the report suggests several ways short of public ownership of the land that pathways can be maintained, "Basically, you don't want wall-to-wall development or anything like that," Sauvajot said. "We want to make sure that critical choke points aren't blocked by major roads like freeways, and that developments that do occur make their fencing wildlife passable."

To read the whole article, go here Mercury News

Last year there was an article in the paper about a citizens group that was banding together to keep officials from building a bridge over the 405 freeway to allow wildlife to pass through where they normally would have. It was the classic case of "not in my neighborhood". I am glad to see this, a much more encompassing plan being presented.

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