Article taken from the Santa
Barbara News Press
Published with permission
Landowners' victory disappoints
many
By MELINDA
BURNS
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
4/10/03
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At the meeting, local landowners and national groups, such as the American Land Rights Association, loudly demanded that the Park Service discontinue its study of the coast from Coal Oil Point to Point Sal.
"The opposition from the landowners was broad and deep and had expanded beyond the local community," Mr. Jarvis said. "It was definitely elevated to a higher level of rancor."
The Park Service went ahead with the study, but at Mr. Jarvis' direction, a draft was released this week without a recommendation for a national park of any kind on the Gaviota coast. Instead, the Park Service recommended "enhanced local and state management" to provide more trails to the beach and the national forest, strengthen agricultural zoning and protect the creeks.
Up until the forum and Mr. Jarvis' appointment thereafter to the Park Service headquarters in Oakland, the agency had been considering a range of options for Park Service involvement, including a national seashore or a national reserve designation.
The agency will make a final recommendation after public hearings in May and the close of public comment in July.
On Wednesday, preservationist groups such as the Gaviota Coast Conservancy, Surfrider Foundation and Environmental Defense Center said they would ask the Park Service in the coming months to reconsider establishing a national park of some kind on the Gaviota coast. Only with the financial clout of Congress can the area be permanently saved from urbanization, they said.
"We can stop developers," said Bob Keats, vice chairman of Surfrider. "It all comes down to how much we can afford to pay our lawyers. But ultimately, there's got to be a way to buy out people who are willing to sell."
To date, local, state and nonprofit funds have permanently protected about 6 percent of the 215,000-acre coast. Another 56 percent lies within the Vandenberg Air Force Base and Los Padres National Forest. The remaining 38 percent, about 82,000 acres, is in private hands.
"Federal assistance is purely another source of funding and technical advice," said Linda Krop, chief attorney for the Defense Center. "We saw this as a way to help farmers and ranchers survive."
But some landowners would like to shut the door on the Park Service altogether. Henry Schulte, who manages the Dos Pueblos Ranch, one of the largest and most profitable avocado operations west of Goleta, said, "It gets resented a lot when people try to come and tell us what we're doing right and wrong. We're fine. Leave us alone."
In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Jarvis, a veteran with 25 years in the Park Service, explained why he decided to scrap the earlier proposals and recommend against a national park for the Gaviota coast.
First, he said, to get the lay of the land, he spent three days on the coast after the Buellton forum, walking every trail from the road to the beach, driving up every canyon road, visiting all the state beaches and venturing into the national forest.
"It is a beautiful, spectacular area," Mr. Jarvis said. "I came away with the lasting impression that there's already a lot of protection in play at Gaviota. The landowners have some values, and you can see some good stewardship in place.
"Clearly, this place has incredible resources. It's nationally, if not internationally significant. It could fit into the array of National Park Service areas. It's certainly of that quality and stature."
But when he assumed the post and began to wade through stacks of public comment on the Park Service study, Mr. Jarvis said, he realized that the landowner opposition was pervasive.
"Some of them might have been inclined to negotiate with us, but they stuck with the larger group," he said. "It was a pride thing, too. The people of the Gaviota area felt they were doing a good job and they didn't need us.
"You need a large body of willing sellers for any type of park designation. You can't have a checkerboard square of federal ownership because you just complicate things."
Although there is a lot of land for sale right now on the coast, Mr. Jarvis said, "it doesn't mean they'll sell to us."
And as for the many hundreds of residents who voiced support for a national seashore or some other kind of park designation, he said: "The support was not from those who own the land. That only goes so far."
Budget constraints were another consideration, Mr. Jarvis said. Under the Bush administration, the Park Service is focused on reducing a national backlog of maintenance and repairs.
"It's pretty tough for me to take on a huge, new big area that's going to need a big budget to launch," Mr. Jarvis said.
Finally, he said, he came to believe that the park proposals were "destabilizing or creating polarization amongst those who share a lot of common values."
And so he proposed other options, such as partnerships among ranchers to protect creeks; sale of development rights to nonprofit land trusts; incentives for the protection of Chumash archaeological sites; and funding for significant landmarks and historic places, if the landowners would allow them to be inventoried.
On his travels along the coast, Mr. Jarvis said, he pulled over every time he saw a car parked along the highway, and often he saw trash and human waste along makeshift trails. The Park Service could help local governments improve public access along the coast through federal grants and technical advice, Mr. Jarvis said.