Assembly Standing Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife

Okay, so - all right.

Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm calling to order the joint informational hearing on state parks, a joint meeting between the Assembly Committee on Water Parks and Wildlife, chaired by my colleague, Assemblymember Diane Papan, and the Select Committee of State Parks, chaired by myself.

This will be an informational hearing on the status of state parks, where we will be discussing California's state park system, the potential challenges state parks face, and there are many, as well as what California is doing to achieve climate resiliency. And we'll hear from many people regarding that before we begin, we have some housekeeping to go over.

There will not be, we will not have phone testimony for our hearing, so public comment will be in person or submitted via email on the committee's website. We will maintain decorum during this hearing. We will not permit conduct that disrupts or otherwise impedes the hearing. Any individual who is disruptive may be removed from the room.

I'd like to thank the members and staff for attending this hearing. We have a fantastic set of panelists for all of you. As you may gather, our members from both committees have other committees that they're attending to, so members will be coming in and out.

I want to appreciate that Assemblymember Greg Hart and our vice chair of the committee, Mister Mathis, are both with us at this time. California has the largest and most diverse state park system in the United States, with 280 park properties on 1.6 million acres.

This is a great natural and cultural treasure that California has been maintaining since the selection of the first state park in 1862.

It's amazing to see over a century of natural resources be maintained so that future generations are able to see the wonders of nature, just as we have with all of the historic storms, floods, heat waves, pest infestations, and other extreme climatic events happening.

Now more than ever, we need to protect the environment for the effects of climate change. State parks play a critical role in what I like to call California resiliency. They are California's backbone when it comes to defending biodiversity, combating urban heat rise, preventing wildfires, and preserving our waters.

When the state park system is in jeopardy, all of California is in jeopardy. Low-income, working-class communities of color, largely Latino and Black, often feel the impacts of climate change the hardest.

This is a principal reason why I asked speaker to appoint me as chair of this select committee a few years back, because I wanted California's climate and sustainability to account for those who are most vulnerable. By investing in a more resilient California climate, we can safeguard our public health, protect our sensitive environments, and ensure a sustainable future for generations to come.

We have a great set of panelists, as I mentioned earlier, for our hearing today, including representatives from the three state park entities, as well as stakeholders who can speak to outdoor equity from the implementation perspective and the perspective of the community.

But before we introduce our panelists, I'd like to ask our chair of the Water Parks and Wildlife, Assemblymember Papan, and other committee members to give opening remarks.

Good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you, Assemblymember.

But I think with efforts like these, we can certainly overcome that oxymoron because it really is imperative that we work together on many fronts to achieve this resilience.

And as we go through, I'd like us all to kind of keep in the back of our minds how we pay for such endeavors, because, you know, talk can be cheap, and I know it takes a collective effort.

And one of the things we are kind of fortunate to have in the climate, and especially parks and maintenance, is we do have our private nonprofit partners who are often play a key role in achieving some of the resilience that we're going to talk about today.

So, I want to thank advance, my colleagues that are here, our witnesses, who are taking the time to engage in this important discussion. I want to extend a special thank you to Assemblymember Reyes for championing state parks and engaging in the many ways these parks provide value to Californians.

With that, I will turn it over to my colleagues that want to comment and let you proceed.

Mister Hart?

Yeah, I just want to briefly thank Chair Gomez Reyes and Chair Papan for convening this important hearing. And I think that state parks are so important because previous generations of Californians have in creating this incredible system that we enjoy today and with climate change and the issues that we are facing now.

We have a tremendous responsibility to be stewards for this state park system and to preserve and protect it for the future generations that really need to enjoy the open space, and the habitat benefits that the state park system provides all Californians today.

It's a large task that we face, but we have tremendous partners and the stakeholders that have invested for generations as well in developing the state park system. And we owe them our full attention and commitment to making sure that the state parks that we've all enjoyed are there for future generations to enjoy as well.

Thank you. Assemblymember Quirk-Silva.

I want to thank the Assemblymembers Pap and Reyes for hosting this. I had the privilege of attending, I believe, your first select committee, about this time last year, and because of that committee, was able to bring out a specific bill, outdoor equity.

And that's where I really feel is the work of our body, is to listen, to learn, and then to act. With 280 California State Parks, we certainly know they're not only here as a place to visit and experience, but certainly there are locations for habitats, for ecosystems, and how we care for them in the future will very much be how we define our priorities in California; very different locations from the north to the south, but certainly open to all.

And that's one of my focuses, is really making sure we build that community of visitors, that diversity of visitors, but also do the caretaking we need to keep the state parks not only accessible but inviting and make sure that we can continue to do that decades from now. Thank you.

Thank you and thank you for being part of this process throughout. All right, I'd like to now turn it over to Chair Papan for our first panel.

Let's have our witnesses come forward so that we may hear from them on the important subject of the state's approach to achieving, excuse me, climate resiliency. We have Jay Chamberlin and Madeline Drake. Jay is the Chief Natural Resources Division of California State Parks, and Madeline Drake is the Assistant Secretary, California Natural Resources Agency. Welcome to you both.

Well, thank you very much. Madam chairs and members and staff. My name is Jay Chamberlain. I'm the Chief of the Natural Resources Division for California State Parks, and it really is my pleasure to be here today.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to the critically important issues associated with climate change, not just the impacts on state parks, but how we're working hard to address those impacts.

So, as has already been said, it's so lovely to listen to your opening comments, because it's already been said and observed that California is privileged to have arguably the most diverse set of protected lands managed by any state agency in the country here with its state park system.

And, of course, that we could go on and on about it, but literally, from the rainforests of the northwestern part of the state to each of California's deserts and along a quarter of California's coastline, our state park system is really emblematic of the diversity of California. And there's a lot in between, I skipped over. I don't want to give short shrift, but just acknowledging that our state park system was constructed intentionally to reflect the diversity of California's ecosystem, and the state park system does reflect this extraordinary diversity.

And it also reflects, of course, the cultural diversity that's been spoken about today with more historic sites than any other state entity, as well as incredibly important archaeological sites and other cultural sites. So, state parks is also fortunate that it, jurisdictionally, we're not limited to just the real estate that we have.

We also have a division of boating and waterways with responsibility for safe and accessible boating. We also have an off-highway motor vehicle division that supports off highway recreation around the state, including on state park lands, selected state park lands.

And we also have the Office of Historic Preservation, which is responsible for the protection of historic and cultural resources. And each of those has its own appointed commission with jurisdiction, as of course, for state parks also have the State Park and recreation Commission with jurisdiction over state parks.

And we're lucky to have someone we refer to as Commissioner Barth, who's Executive Director. Barth is on a subsequent panel, so I hope you will welcome her. So, we're clearly committed as a state agency to advancing climate resilience. I'm going to talk about that in some detail.

But we're also supporting the goals of outdoors for all, which has really been a hallmark of this administration, and enabling safe, equitable and enjoyable access to parks and open spaces and natural resources and cultural and recreational amenities for all of Californians.

So, with that as context and thank you for letting me set the context of our extraordinary system, turning our attention to climate change. It's already been said that California is experiencing the effects of climate change already.

I think we're all well aware, certainly on the heels of the ongoing heat waves that we've experienced in Sacramento this summer, everyone's well aware that we're experiencing longer, more pronounced heat waves.

Also, longer periods of drought, changed precipitation patterns such as reduced Sierra's snowpack, and more extreme weather, which we'll come to in a moment, as well as wildfires and other secondary impacts. So, climate change is upon us, and of course, those impacts are being felt by the state park system as well.

That said, we play, we at state parks play a unique role among state agencies in that we have developed conservation strategies that we are charged with protecting those natural resources that I've already described and sustaining them for future generations. There we are.

So, we are charged in statute, even before climate change was upon us, we had already been charged with sustaining these important ecosystems for future generations, has already been said. And so, our orientation is already towards adapting along the way to various impacts, including those impacts of climate change and the natural resource.

We will hear more about biological diversity, I believe it was in the staff report, and we may also hear from Assistant Secretary Drake about biodiversity. I won't stress the point other than to emphasize that California is extraordinary for its biological richness, and we at state parks are charged with maintaining that.

So, our resource management approach really focuses on the restoration and management of native ecosystems for future generation. And so that is a cornerstone to how we approach climate change. And I had some slides which may be a useful reference, but there, the first, we can go to the next. That was just an overview.

The next slide is just an overview of some of the things I've already mentioned. But if we go to the third slide, it's going to talk to kind of our broad, at the broadest possible level, our approach. I've already mentioned our stewardship charge.

The second that I want to emphasize is that we have already built climate change planning into everything we do. We are blessed with a broad multidisciplinary staff, archaeologists, cultural resource specialists, as well as scientists and of course, practitioners, very skilled folks that build your trails and maintain the facilities, as well as law enforcement and others.

So, we have this multidisciplinary engine that can drive our work, and we have committed to driving climate change considerations into all of that work, drawing on that expertise. And then last critical to our approach is, I neglected to mention that 80 million Californians visit the state park system each year.

So critical to our approach is education and what we call interpretation programs that can engage those visitors and help to educate them about the impacts of climate change, but also about what they can do and what society is doing to approach climate change.

And of course, in California, we're doing a great deal, but it's really critical to the success and to the points that have been made about the role California State Parks plays is really emphasizing that public education role.

I also should note that California State Parks has just recently adopted a new strategic plan that we call the path forward, which has absorbed all of the direction from this current administration, including the Governor's Equity Executive order, which is N-1622, as well as the 30 by 30 Executive Order, N-8220, the outdoors for all initiatives, and others.

And it really sort of builds upon this platform of advancing some of the themes that have been already discussed here today in terms of equity and access, and that really lays our trajectory for the next five years and specifically calls on the department to address climate change systematically, both at the park unit level and also statewide, by supporting things like landscape scale stewardship and restoration, which I'll talk about in a minute.

So also, part of it is we state parks are part of the administration, and so we support both through the research we sponsor, though, for example, our oceanography program, or by the work our folks learn on the ground.

By implementation, we help support things such as the California Climate adaptation strategy or some of the emerging science around sea level rise and the statewide guidelines. We are part and parcel of this administration's broad, and I would say all-encompassing approach to climate resilience.

So, I'm going to just briefly talk about a few areas. We've already gone to. the slide on sea level rise. So, to quickly highlight, sea level rise ecosystem restoration and our wildfire and forest resilience, and then partnerships and planning.

So, turning first to sea level rise, I've already mentioned that a quarter of the California coastline is roughly is under the stewardship of California State Parks. That's over 100 coastal units. Importantly, 50 million Californians and others visit those parks each year.

I think we all know it's emblematic of California and it's also extremely exposed to the effects of climate change in terms of sea level rise.

So just as a background, I mean, state sponsored science through California's fourth climate assessment sort of famously pointed out that by 2100 at the current rates of sea level rise, two-thirds of Southern California's beaches will be lost.

That's almost an existential threat to these important resources, which, of course, are important recreationally, I've already pointed out, but are also a wide array of critical ecosystems, such as estuaries, arguably one of the most important ecosystems the state stewards, are these places where anadromous fish and other wildlife and birds really gain their sustenance.

So, our coastal units are critical for the future of biodiversity, as well as this recreational resource. And our own preliminary modeling also confirmed that many of our facilities are indeed in harm's way. And with 5ft of sea level rise and storm surges, they would be intensely impacted.

So, and we need to go no further back than January of 2023, when dozens of park units were impacted by those big, those big storms that impact that hit all over California. And you'll probably hear about it later, but there was over $190 million worth of damage to our coastal state park units.

And so, we're really now focused on the recovery of those units that were impacted.

But fortunately, before that happened, in 2021, California had adopted our California State Parks, adopted our sea level rise adaptation strategy, which is really this three pronged strategy to prepare us for sea level rise and extreme events and to provide staff, really provide tools to our on the ground folks about how to confront the challenge, and then with really the ultimate goal of continuing to provide continued recreational access and protecting our resources.

So, I could go into great detail. I won't, I don't have the time to do it today, but that sea level strategy really articulates a broad as I've already foreshadowed multidisciplinary work plan to bring the diverse talents of our staff to the task as well as engage partners.

It lays out the principles that we'll approach in terms of using the best available science, using multidisciplinary teams working with our allied agencies.

But it also maps out some concrete steps that we need to take in terms of developing tools that our staff can use, but also starting down the path of really implementing a suite of projects to address this challenge. And we've made good steps down that pathway.

Certainly a few examples where we were losing coastal facilities and used sort of gray and green infrastructure through living shoreline type approaches where you actually build resilient ecosystems on top of hardscape, but also examples where we've removed derelict infrastructure. Infrastructure that was built maybe even before state parks were there, yet that was creating an impediment to the natural succession of that land, such as road removal at MacKerricher State Park.

And we've also stabilized, there are a lot of archaeological and sensitive sites on the coast. We've used a lot of innovative techniques to document those sites, but also secure them and keep them out of harm's way while we can, recognizing that some of these sites will be lost forever to sea level rise.

And so, we've made important progress on those existing projects, and we've also identified and developed more than a dozen additional projects to advance when we have the opportunity in the coming years. So, I'm going to turn my attention now to our ecosystem restoration and wildfire resilience.

As I mentioned, with over 1.6 million acres and the diverse array of ecosystems that we have, the foundation of state park stewardship is the restoration of degraded ecosystems.

And it needs to be said that with many state parks that we have in the system, we actually inherited some legacy problems, whether that was industrial timberland and the associated clearcuts and roads that came along with that, or whether it was other types of extractive use, including sand mining on the coast and other things.

So, we have a lot of opportunities to, and we have already been at the task of restoring ecosystems. But over the last, last few years in particular, really since 2021, we have been able to massively scale up our ecosystem restoration work.

In addition to restoring coastal estuaries and coastal dune systems, which are so important to build resilience to sea level rise, we've also confronted the legacy issue of 100-plus years of fire suppression around the state, which, of course, has led and contributed greatly to the extensive wild and destructive wildfires we've experienced around the state.

I don't need to tell you all about that, but we've been fortunate to develop a wildfire and forest resilience program over the last couple years that has really given us the potential to get good fire back on the land where possible and create the conditions for managing those landscapes in a healthy and sustainable way as well.

And so just moving on, I will say that our ambitions are still great in this space and we're fortunate to have a program with our WFRP, Wildfire Resilience Program, that's not only aligned with statewide goals through the Governor's Wildfire Enforced Resilience task force and related policy that's been developed, but we have the good fortune of one time funds that we'll have through fiscal year 27-28 to be able to put that good fire on the ground.

And our ambitions are to exceed more than 100 of our state park units, where we will have that opportunity. We've already treated more than 60 units and we're making great progress. And I could give you very specific examples, but in the interest of time, I'll defer that one.

I think importantly on this, and I'm going to squeeze in one other issue, which is extreme heat. Of course, we know that our communities are impacted by extreme heat, and I've already mentioned the long heat waves that we've been facing this summer. And restored habitats are critical to providing some measure of cool, cool environments.

And while that's obviously very true on the coast and but not everyone can get to the coast, we're going to speak later about some of our restored ecosystems that are nearby our disadvantaged communities in the great Central Valley, where riparian restoration is of course, being driven by and is targeted towards restoring ecosystems for their ecosystem value.

But they provide these additional benefits for helping cool and provide cool and welcoming places to the visiting public. And I'm eager to talk about our newest state park in that regard.

But before I do, I want to turn to just to the next slide please to talk about one other way that state parks is driving this multidisciplinary effort that's required when we confront climate change into all of our work.

And that's through our state park planning process and through the partnerships that we've been fortunate enough to be able to cultivate. And importantly, each park requires a general plan or other planning documents before activities can be taken there, as this committee well knows.

And we are now working with a group to drive to bring a consistent set of approaches into those planning documents so that we're relying on consistent metrics for the climate impacts we'll see, such as the fourth and hopefully soon fifth climate assessment to do that work, but also to outline a consistent set of approaches that will help us both make those sites accessible over the long term, no matter what those stressors are, but also bringing best science to that task to also help us do resource management, among other things. And this, among many other things, requires partnerships. Partnerships have been - it's been part of state park since the very beginning.

And we are very fortunate to have some of our very close partners here with us today, folks that have been at the table with us to help us do on the ground projects, but also help assist us in laying out where we can go and what additional assets we can bring to the table.

I certainly would love to name the names of, but everyone here is on our side and pulling for state parks. And so, we're very, very grateful for them. Parks California may be the latest on the scene of our, of our partners.

I want to give them a particular shout out because they did help us with some of this climate planning, the planning process that I just spoke about. They partnered with us to provide us with climate fellows that could do some of the hard work to advance some of this planning work that I just spoke about.

A really critical partnership, of course, is our partnership with tribal governments and state parks is partnering with tribes all around the state, and those include both federally recognized tribes and non-federally recognized tribes.

As of this time, we have 12 MOUs with tribal entities that allow us to, that really lay out how we partner with them in terms of our resource management and our forward activities. And these are all around the state, and we have many more in the pipeline. And thank you very much for that.

And I'll wrap up by bringing us to our most recent state park. On June 12, the Department opened Dos Rios Ranch to the public. This newest state park really creates new recreation opportunities near a disadvantaged community, as I've already mentioned, near the community of Modesto and provides for that climate resilience.

We were fortunate to have another great partner and river partners who'd restored the property, the riparian function, the habitat benefits, the groundwater recharge, that suite of benefits that we really can achieve in a state park, and now it's open to the public. So, there's much more detail, of course, on all of this that could be shared.

But I thank you for your time and attention. And really, I can't help but share one more slide, which is the mission of state parks, which really, I think because it's such a good mission that balances recreational access, resource protection, cultural resource protection.

It is always a reminder, it's certainly important front and center for all of our staff every day that we balance these things. And it is through honoring this mission that we will protect the system into future generations. So, thank you very much for your time.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And we'll turn it over now to our second witness, Kate.

Madam chairs and committee members, my name is Madeline Drake, and I'm the Assistant Secretary for Biodiversity and Habitat with the California Natural Resources Agency. Thank you for having me here today.

I'm excited to talk with you all about California's 30 by 30 goal and the role that California State Parks is playing in helping us achieve this state goal. Next slide, please.

California is home to more species of plant and animals than any other state, and this biodiversity accounts for one third of all of the biodiversity in the nation. We are one of 36 global biodiversity hotspots around the world, and that's because of all the rare species that we have here.

However, being a global biodiversity hotspot also means that many of our species are under threat, many due to habitat loss, as well as climate impacts like wildfire, drought, extreme heat, and much more.

Recognizing this, in October of 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order in 8220, which really broadly is meant to achieve the state's nature-based solutions, climate and biodiversity goals. But importantly, it committed the state to conserving 30% of our lands and coastal waters by 2030. And if you're asking, well, why 30%? And why by 2030?

Well, this is actually an international movement, and scientists from all over the world have come together to say, if we as a globe can conserve 30% of our lands and waters by 2030, then we'll have a fighting chance against the biodiversity and climate crises that we face.

California wanted to be a part of that solution, which is why this Executive order was signed. And now over 190 countries are with us in this commitment and moving this forward. Next slide, please. We knew we could only be successful in achieving 30 by 30 goal if we had others helping us.

We wanted to hear everyone's feedback on how we can achieve that goal, as well as how we should count towards the 30 by 30 target. We went through about a year, a little over a year of a public engagement process before we ever released our strategy.

This included regional workshops, nine of them all across the state, in which we had about 2500 participants join us.

We also had an online survey with about 850 participants who could provide longer answers as well as sort of data sets or papers that they wanted to share with us. Knowing we had some key questions on equity, biodiversity, climate, conservation of lands and conservation of coastal waters, we also held five topical advisory panels with experts from across the state where we could ask key questions to help us really address some of the issues that we were struggling with. And at the same time, we released those questions to the public because California has a wealth of knowledge and we wanted to hear from everybody.

Even after we released our strategy, we received over 1000 letters, we had an advisory committee, and we had public meetings so that people could talk with us.

And through all of this, we met with a little over 70 tribes through tribal consultation process to make sure that our California Native American tribes also felt heard and seen in our strategy. Next slide, please. On Earth Day of 2022, we released the pathways to 30 by 30 strategy.

And for all of the folks who helped us in providing impact, providing input for the strategy, they should be really proud because this strategy gets global recognition.

It gets global recognition because it's a really science based, but also an inclusive public process that got us to a comprehensive definition for how we're going to count for 30 by 30, as well as the strategies that we're going to take to reach the goal. Next slide, please. Some of the important elements of this strategy.

First are three key objectives, and this is what we're hoping for, kind of the gold standard of the conservation that we want to achieve through 30 by 30. And that's to protect and restore biodiversity, to expand access to nature, and to mitigate and build resilience to climate change.

And while every project might not meet all three of these core objectives, we're doing our best to strive to find projects that are multi benefit in nature. Our strategy also has three core commitments, and these are things that we want to be thinking about and how we want to be achieving our 30 by 30 goal.

And that's to advance justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, to strengthen our tribal partnerships and protect our economic prosperity, clean energy resources and food supply. Next slide, please.

And really importantly, what that strategy does is provides a definition for how or what we mean when we're talking about 30 by 30 conservation areas. After an incredible amount of public input on what this definition should be, where we landed was land and coastal water, areas that are durably protected and managed to sustain functional ecosystem, both intact and restored, and the diversity of life that they support.

Next slide, please. So, given that definition, we currently are at about 24.4% of our lands and 16.2% of our coastal waters. And this includes many types of conservation, things that are dedicated conservation areas. Think about wildlife refuges, our recreation lands and open spaces like state parks, as well as local parks and national parks.

It also includes working lands with a biodiversity focus to them. So, think about grazing lands or other places that are really thinking about the biodiversity and ecosystem health. And then for the coastal waters, includes our state's 124 marine protected areas along the coast. Next slide, please.

But since we're here today to talk about state parks, I wanted you all to know that state parks make up about 5.2% of what's currently protected throughout the state. And these are amazing acres, but they are just a piece of the whole. But we're very appreciative of them. Next slide, please.

So, to get to that goal, our strategy lays out 10 different pathways. Some of them might feel a little bit obvious, like we need more strategic land acquisitions, noting that this will be voluntary, locally led acquisitions and things like conservation easements.

But it also includes things like restoration and stewardship, recognizing that not all areas we can serve today are going to immediately be healthy ecosystems and might need a little bit of extra work; includes things like advanced mitigation and enhancing conservation on existing public lands, and finding creative opportunities beyond just sort of acquiring new acres. Next slide, please.

But since we're here to talk about state parks, I want to highlight three of many, many examples of how state parks really is contributing to the 30 by 30 goal and has been a great partner throughout. The first project I want to highlight is the Redwoods rising project, and this is up on the north coast of California.

This great project is working to expand to restore 120,000 acres, and is a partnership between state parks, Save the Redwoods League, and the National Park Service.

This is a really important project because old growth forests, you know, are an iconic species here in California, but also really important for climate change as they sequester a great amount of carbon.

They're also working to make sure that the public can better access these places, so it really meets that biodiversity access and climate goals that we're really hoping to achieve through 30 by 30. And it ensures that this is more than a counting exercise. This is really about meeting those three key objectives. Next slide, please.

Secondly, state parks is a great connector to all these other conserved lands. As I said, they're a piece of the pie, a very important piece of the pie. But they connect to a huge landscape of other conserved areas, and we hope that we can continue to be strategic.

And where we look for new lands that connect with state parks and many others as well. The example I like to highlight here that I know Jay brought it up, and I'm sure one of our panelists is going to bring it up on panel two, is the new Dos Rio State Park.

This is an incredible location that connects to the San Joaquin River national wildlife refuge, which has a little bit of different of a mission than a state park does but is really important for biodiversity and wildlife. And in the context of climate, species need to have spaces so that they can sort of move around the landscape to eat, to feed, to breed, and that's only going to sort of need to increase as we see climate impacts. So having a connected space is really critical, and Dos Rios is a great example also for connectivity.

It's really connected closely to the Modesto community, a community that is park poor in comparison to many other places in the state. And so, it is great for wildlife as well as connectivity to people. Next slide, please.

And the third example that I want to highlight is that California State Parks are treasured by so many people here in California, but honestly, across the world, I think. And so, they offer a great space to educate, interact, communicate with the public in a really unique and helpful way.

30 by 30 is a movement, and so we need folks to really be on board and to be supportive of what we're trying to do as a state to reach this goal. And the example that I really want to highlight here is the State Parks PORTS Program.

They partner with K-12 schools all across the state for both virtual and in person field trips, and it's teaching children to steward our lands, to take care of our lands, why biodiversity is important, why climate resilience is important.

And with 30 by 30, we're also offering them a message of hope that there is a solution and that we can work together to achieve this goal. As a side note, we did provide stickers and pens kindly donated by partners so that you all can help be a part of this movement as well. Next slide, please.

So, in closing, we do have five and a half million acres to go to reach the state's 30 by 30 target on land and 500,000 acres in coastal waters. And these acres are ultimately going to help us conserve our incredible biodiversity, mitigate and build resilience to climate change, and increase access.

We also know, though, that right now we have 24.8 million already conserved. That's a great number. In addition, first lands first for coastal waters, we have 546,000. And we need to make sure that those places are really meeting our biodiversity, climate and access goals.

State parks has been a tremendous partner as well as many others, to make these projects come to life and happen. And so, we look forward to working not only with state parks, but many partners across the state to reach this goal. And happy to take any questions.

Excellent. Thank you so much. I will ask the committee if anybody has questions. Assemblymember Hart.

Guess the obvious question from the last point that you made about how far we have to go over the next six years is, is there a strategy to achieve the 2030 land and coastal waterways 2030 goal?

Yeah. So, the pathways to 30 by 30 strategy, the sort of 10 pathways are ways that we think we can really get there. We had to draw, be a careful line of not being too prescriptive cause we really want it to be locally led, voluntary conservation, but also to empower folks to be able to make those decisions and where we really feel like opportunities informed by the public.

So that strategy is out there for folks to sort of look for creative opportunities, as well as we have a suite of online mapping tools that I didn't mention called CA Nature. And so, folks can look at data and help them find opportunities for biodiversity, access and climate.

So that is our strategy that's out there, and we hope that people are utilizing it and finding it helpful.

So, it's really a challenge to local citizens and local governments to rally to conserve local spaces. And then that adds up to trying to meet the statewide goals.

And we want to be the wind and their sails. So that's why we call it a movement. Thank you for the question.

Anyone else? Okay, did you want to save public comment for the end or have public comment on this section now? We'll do public comment on this section for continuity now. So if you have public comment, please come forward.

Not seeing any. Thank you. Yeah. If you want to come forward at the end, you may do so. With that, we'll turn it over to the second panel. Thank you both for your time, your energy and your vision. And I will turn it over to Assembly Member Reyes to introduce the second panel.

Thank you so much, Jay Chamberlain and Madeleine Drake. It's so important to know what we're looking, where we are, what we're doing, and where we plan to be in the future. And I appreciate having you talk about all of those things. Thank you so much.

All right, for the next panel, it's case studies in climate resiliency at state parks, and I'd like to invite Emily Doyle, PhD. Doctor Emily Doyle, California State Parks Foundation, Julie Rentner, President of River Partners, Austin Stevenott, senior restoration manager of rivers, partner and a Member of the Northern Miwok tribe, and Sarah Barth, Executive Director, Sempervirenz Fund.

Come on down. Who's going to go first? I have Doctor Emily Doyle teed up first. I don't know. Is that you? That's you. Okay, why don't you lead us off? Thank you for being here.

This on, are we good to go? So good afternoon, madam chairs and Committee Members. Thank you for inviting me today. I do have a presentation. There we go. So I am the director of climate resilience at California State Parks foundation, and we are a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and protecting state parks for future generations.

And as we all know, this means preparing for climate change. And I joined the foundation about two years ago. I was really excited to become a Member and contribute to this mission. I'm a California native. I grew up going to state parks camping at Calaveras. I had my fifth birthday party at Sea Cliff State beach.

So I was really excited to kind of bring my knowledge to support parks as much as possible. And if you want to go to the next slide, please. So I'm here today to speak about how parks can really contribute to climate resilience for California communities.

And just a brief kind of outline of what I'm going to go over is first just touching on how climate resilient parks support a climate resilient California before moving more into discussing extreme heat, which is the specific focus of this presentation, which leads into the idea of parks as climate refuges and the idea of creating community resilience hubs at parks to support Californians.

So we can go ahead and get started with the next slide, please. So as we all know, as we've been hearing, you know, so far this afternoon is that California State Parks really support a climate resilient California. 280 California State Parks, 1.6 million acres of land. We just heard how they're so important in protecting California's biodiversity.

And they also, state parks also manages about a quarter of the California coastline, again showing the critical role that parks play in increasing resilience throughout the entire state. Next slide, please. But also, what we keep coming back to is the idea that parks are really for people.

And this is where we start to look at the intersection of parks, climate change and communities. So parks see tens of millions of visitors every year. We know that spending time outside is really important for people's physical and mental health, such as state parks.

And that as climate change continues to accelerate, as temperatures continue to go up, parks are going to become increasingly important climate refuges over time. And this is recognized in many, many planning documents.

For example, the California extreme heat Action plan specifically points to the need to preserve, enhance, increase and establish community green areas in order to protect public health. So, like state parks, and as I said, this is specifically, we're going to look at extreme heat today. So we can get into that a little more.

If you want to go to the next slide, please. So as we all know, unfortunately the side is cut off a little bit, but I think you have printouts, so you should be all right. As we all know, it's getting hotter. Just several weeks ago, we had the hottest day in recorded history.

And this July was actually the hottest July in all of California's recorded history as well. And what you're looking at here is a plot showing the temperature anomaly of every year since 1976. And what that means is this is the difference in temperature of the annual average of that year compared to the average of the 20th century.

So between 1901 to 2000. And we can see that it has been 47 years since we had a colder than average year back in 1976. And since then, it's only been getting hotter and hotter. Last year had around the 15 hottest days on record. I believe they were almost all simply in the month of July.

And then, as I said, we just broke that record last July. So we see that obviously this is an increasing problem that needs to be addressed. But we can also look beyond simply global temperatures and look at what's happening in terms of extreme heat events. So next slide, please.

And this is showing the projected number of extreme heat events at six different locations in California through the end of the century. And these are extreme heat events. That means they have adverse impacts on public health. So this is where you really start looking at why you need to increase community resilience to climate change.

And we can see there's two different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios here. So in yellow, you see a moderate emissions scenario, which is more along the trajectory that we're currently following. And then red shows a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

And just looking at Fresno, for example, we can see that under a high emission scenario, we see a 13 fold increase in the number of extreme heat days every year. And even under the more moderate trajectory, we still see an eight fold increase. So these are the events that are severely impacting California communities.

And this is where parks can play a really important role. So next slide, please. And so this is, as I said, how parks can really be climate refuges. But if we look a little closer as to what we mean by that, we can kind of think of it in three different sections that I'm going to go over.

So first is how urban parks can help break up heat islands. Parks are really critical in terms of providing resources during extreme events, like extreme heat events, and also that they can really be focused to support under resourced communities, which, as we know, are disproportionately impacted by climate change. So let's go through these a little more.

Next slide, please. So an urban heat island is basically, as I'm sure most people know, an area with a lot of concrete, little green space. And it leads to significantly higher temperatures than more rural or areas with more green space.

So this is showing a temperature profile ranging from, you know, the rural outside city up through downtown, all the way back out to suburbia and the farmland.

And you can see that where there's a park about three quarters of the way from the left, an urban park results in a temperature decrease of around six to seven degrees fahrenheit. And that's also a relatively conservative estimate. You can see values more than twice that when you look at different locations.

So this is showing right away how our urban California State Parks are really important in creating cooler communities. And they can also simply be a refuge for people to, to go and escape the heat. Next slide, please. Secondly, as I said, parks can provide really important resources for communities who may not otherwise have access to them.

And this is where it's really important to have a lot of community engagement, listen to people when they can tell you what they need in order to be safe during these events.

And an example of this is this is a plan that California State Parks foundation helps support the development of the Baldwin Hills community resilience and access plan couple years ago.

And this was looking at the idea of kind of developing a location, or we can call it a climate resilience hub that can provide the resources for that community, one of which was in the Baldwin Hill Scenic Overlook State park. And so again, this had, I believe it was 18 months of community engagement, including surveys, working groups.

They had an Advisory Committee with community Members. And what they took away from this in terms of, you know, the input that they got from the community of what resources they really needed. A lot of them, most of them, the top ranked ones, were around extreme heat events.

So shade cooling infrastructure, such as misting stations, hydration stations, also things around power shortages. So phone charging stations, generators available, Wifi. And we also know that as extreme heat events increase, we also see an increased risk of power outages.

So that, again, shows how these spaces, state parks, can really help provide these resources for people who may not otherwise have them. Next slide, please. And then also the idea of creating these climate resilience hubs that can really support, they can really place equity at the center of this conversation.

A great example of this is we're currently doing a lot of work at Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, which is in south San Francisco, in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, which has a long history of environmental injustice. It's the site of an old shipping yard.

So very high pollution burden, high asthma rates, Low birth rates, and a very Low income community. So when they are seeing these extreme heat events, there isn't, they don't always have a way to stay safe. I can go home and turn the AC on. That's a privilege that a lot of people don't have.

So what we're doing right now is conducting this feasibility study of how, what it would take to kind of turn this park into a climate resilience hub as kind of the context that we're thinking. And this involves looking at both short, mid and long term adaptation steps that can be taken.

And again, this is where community engagement is really, really important. And there's been a lot of server work done. So there has been engagement with the community in that respect. So we can look, these include things for short term, something as simple as shade, which, again, the Baldwin Hills report showed that people really needed.

So installing shade structures could be something relatively easy that we could do to help support that community in that park. A midterm adaptation step. This is a really good kind of an example that shows how you can increase community engagement as well as have climate education. The idea of something like a tree planting program.

So community Members come out, they get involved, they perhaps learn something about climate resilience throughout the program. And then as those trees grow over time, you create more tree canopy, larger shaded areas for people to seek refuge.

And then what we hope to take out of this report is really out of this study, is to really find kind of the tools that can really help state parks meet this threat going forward.

Parks are already, are already important resources for communities, but we do know that as these events increase, it's going to become a bigger and bigger challenge in order to keep creating these safe spaces for people.

So, yeah, that's really what we're aiming to do here, and just really make sure that state parks has the resources they need that can help them meet this threat going forward.

And so we can really see now that just kind of summing up this section about how building climate resilient parks can really support climate resilient communities throughout California. Next slide, please. But we also know that extreme heat is not the only climate threat.

So I just wanted to close by touching briefly on a report that we released earlier this year, I believe it was in March, looking at how we can build a climate resilient California State park system. And this addresses extreme heat.

So again, the idea of climate resilience hubs and state parks providing important resources during those events, extreme heat events, but it also just lays out a roadmap of work and policy that we can do together to help support state parks and communities.

And this includes wildfire, sea level rise, ecosystem deterioration, the whole range of threats that we think of when we think of what's impacting state parks. So we do have some handouts of summaries of those. If people are interested in taking that. There it is. Yeah. And that was. Yeah. Thank you again for having me here today.

And that was the conclusion of my presentation.

Thank you. All right. Julie Rentner.

Good afternoon. Is this okay? I want to thank the Committee for Convening on this important topic, and I do want to invite continued conversation about how we deploy and engage with communities across our beautiful state and using our state parks as a climate resilience tool. So thank you for your leadership on all of this.

I'm Julie Rettner, and I'm joined by Austin Stevenott, who I'll ask to speak to you in just a minute. We have the pleasure of working together at Dos Rios State Park. I lead the nonprofit river partners. Our mission is to create wildlife habitat that benefits people in the environment. It's pretty broad.

We work across the Central Valley, mostly from reading to Bakersfield, and as well in the Imperial Valley, where ecosystem restoration has the greatest opportunity to improve conditions for communities and people. Right. These places that have significant environmental and equity challenges.

In the last 25 years, we've given new life to 20,000 acres of flood plains, just like Dos Rio State park. So we're really proud of what we've learned along the way. And I'm honored to share some of those stories with you today. Next slide.

zero, so we were so honored to contribute Dos Rios Ranch to California State Park's new park. New or the first new state park in over 10 years. As we've discussed a little bit already, you know, equity and access and environmental justice issues are still particularly challenging here in the Central Valley.

And this park is a place where parks are in short supply and a place where access to shade, refuge and cool places to avoid the heat of the summer, as well as access to the water, is really limited. We were so honored to launch this park in June.

And pictured here is Dolores Huerta, who helped us celebrate the park on Earth 2024, leading us in a chant of si se puede on Earth Day.

And, you know, every time I think of that experience, I think of the inspiration that that chant provides to all of us thinking about our water future here in California and all the work that we need to do. Next slide.

So excited for the invitation to join you here, you know, in this Select Committee, because I really want to take a moment to just describe how we think of this park as a park of the future. Climate Resilience park.

This was place was designed to improve biodiversity, to improve our flood safety and our climate resilience, to make our communities in the valley more vibrant, to conserve water and replenish our depleted aquifers, and even to generate economic activity in the restoration sector, which is growing, we believe, through both our experiences in restoring Central Valley rivers and floodplains, and through the work of launching the state park in partnership with, with California State Parks that, you know, people really are the center of our state's water strategy moving forward.

And without parks like this one, where people can connect to the water systems that they rely upon, we won't have, you know, great decision making in the future about what we do with this precious water that we need and this beautiful economy that we've built. Next slide. So I want to take you into the valley.

This is an illustration of before and after restoration.

The restored floodplain at Dos Rios park is part of the largest restored floodplain in the State of California, over 7000 acres in combination between the lands that will be managed as a state park with public access and lands that are managed as wildlife refuge in partnership with the Federal Government.

This is a huge complex, but it serves a huge water system. The two rivers that make up the Dos Rios area are the San Joaquin river and its largest tributary, the Tuolumne. The San Joaquin river flows down to the pumps that service the Central Valley project and the state water project.

So really, the water flowing past this park supplies drinking water and industrial water to 27 million Americans, I'm sorry, Californians. And then the water flowing through the Tuolumne river here is what's left after the entire Hechechi project draws its water to San Francisco. So we're talking about Dos Rios as kind of a.

It's the heart of this water system here in California, and the state park being located in this place, in a place that's gone through a tremendous restoration in the last decade, is an incredible opportunity to reconnect people to place and people to water. Next slide.

So, to bring Dozerios into fruition, we had to secure funding from over a dozen different public funding programs, state, federal and local funding programs, all of which have some element of benefit from work that can be accomplished through this type of restoration, whether it's biodiversity conservation, water quality, water supply, flood safety.

That's before we began the diligence process with state parks. So this gift of a state park in the Central Valley is the result of actually tremendous state, federal and local collaboration to bring an aligned vision of multi benefit floodplain restoration to fruition.

To move into a vibrant water future, though, we have to think a little bit about our context. And so the maps here show you pre salted settlement, basically, and post settlement, extensive natural habitats across the Central Valley. Dos Rios State park is the black star in the middle. Map.

What we've done over the course of our history as a state is drained, leveled and converted about 4 million acres of natural wet habitats in the central valley to make a very abundant and very probably the most productive agricultural region on planet Earth that humanity has ever seen. Right?

An enormous water delivery system and an enormous food production system that rivals, you know, anything that human humans have ever created before. It's a marvel.

It's also, you know, a place where the dramatic conversion of the landscape has led to the decline of most of our biodiversity, as well as what we're learning more and more, most of the natural function that keeps our watershed working properly. Next slide.

So before I talk deeply about water, I just wanted to share with you that some of our experiences in conservation of biodiversity in the bottom of the Central Valley touch not only salmon is what you might think of in the Central Valley, it's one of the most iconic species that we all struggle to restore.

But bunnies, beetles, butterflies, pond turtles, woodrats, all of these critters can live, do live in the restored forests of our central valley floodplains in Dos Rios State Park, California State Parks.

Taking on the stewardship of such a rich and diverse habitat area is a tremendous contribution to, you know, the wildlife recovery community to biodiversity conservation, and really an outsized contribution when we think of our 30 by 30 targets and conservation.

Sure, it's not the acres, you know, it's not 5 million acres worth of biodiversity restoration, but the number of species that are on the brink of extinction that are supported, and the restored habitats here is astounding. Next slide. So, flood safety.

I want to talk a little bit about flood safety and the role that this park plays in that. So we saw last year communities in Pajaro and Planada and Wilton, McFarland.

Many others suffered really costly flood damages as a result of large atmospheric rivers, climate change change driven atmospheric rivers that pummel the Sierra Nevada and overwhelm our water delivery and water control systems. It's very expensive and challenging to manage levees, even when we have big federal investment in managing the levees that control those floodwaters.

Sometimes the time it takes to get those dollars to the ground, the time it takes to deliver those levee projects, is too long. What Dos Rios State park is featured on the cover of the Central Valley flood protection plan. That's an image of the floodplain covered in flood water.

What it does is it flips the damages situation on its head. This is a place in the landscape where we've been able to set back and breach sperms and levees, welcoming the floodwater onto the landscape in ways that rejuvenates the ecosystem, rejuvenates the vegetation, and creates a really abundant river ecosystem for people to enjoy.

It also reduces stress and strain on levees in the area. So there are communities both immediately adjacent to the park and downstream, for example, Stockton, the metropolitan area, that are at significant risk of flooding any year. Our Department of Water Resources calculates annualized flood damages in this part of the world as $1.2 billion annualized.

That's when you think about one large event stretched over the number of years of the return interval of that event.

So investments in expanded floodplains like that at Dos Rio State park are something that demonstrate, illustrate, and demonstrate a future that keeps our community safe and that actually uses what was a nuisance to become a benefit to the public. Next slide.

As we've been talking about in this entire hearing, California is becoming hotter and drier with more episodic large flood events. And so what we've learned in the past 15 years or so, developing Dos Rio State park, is that these floodplains also help us on the drought side of the hydrology of our, our changing state. Next slide.

This is one of my favorite illustrations. This is from the author Erica Geis, who wrote water always wins. This is a great illustration of how expanded floodplains in the Central Valley contribute to groundwater recharge in really outsized ways.

What we've learned over the years, through draining and drying the bottom of our central valley, we've really disconnected the faucet that refills our below ground aquifers significantly more storage beneath our feet in the central valley than we do in surface water storage across the entire State of California.

If we can find efficient ways to get extra water to flow into the ground, we can make significant changes to improvements to our water supply outlook into the future. Dos Rios does exactly this. It's an expanded floodplain that allows water to sink into the ground for use in dry times.

And we've been able, thanks to significant support from the state, we've been able to engage groundwater research researchers and geophysicists to get real precise about exactly what does this groundwater recharge do for us, what does the storage look like for us?

And as we move into a future of groundwater sustainability, what role do floodplains play in creating that future? Next slide. So if you'll recall that habitat map, bless you. And the map of kind of depleted aquifers across the Central Valley.

The overwhelming conclusion that we all draw, who pay attention to the water system and biodiversity in the Central Valley, is we need to scale. The President of the flood board says we need to do about 30 more Dos Rioses, right.

I love to imagine a future where valley communities from Stockton to Bakersfield and beyond have beautiful parks to go, enjoy shade, enjoy fresh water that also, when we're in the middle of storms, provide a public safety benefit and when we're in the depth of drought, provide a water supply benefit. Right.

This is a future that we want to see for the water supply system of California. We think a significant investment is needed.

And next slide, the role of parks in supporting a significant investment in this water future for California, you know, is self evident in the acres that are needed to be conserved, but also in the jobs and the human connection to restoration that is growing, you know, as a result of this kind of work.

So I just wanted to mention briefly that the restoration sector in California, of course, is growing as a result of our 30 by 30 investments.

But also demonstrations like the Dos Rios state Park inspire new generations of people to think about how they're going to spend their time and their energy contributing to improvements in our water system and our natural resources. So the last thing I wanted to add, last slide, is that we've been schooled.

I had the pleasure of meeting Austin Stevenot about three or four years ago now. And I've learned so much about the way that rivers and freshwater in California also influence our cultural connections and cultural reconnection for tribal members and for folks who trace their roots back thousands of years here in this beautiful state.

So I wanted to ask Austin to share a little bit of his story of Dos Rios State park for you today.

Thank you. My name is Austin Stevenot, Senior Restoration Manager for River Partners. Like Julie said, I met her about four years ago at Dos Rios. My family and I came out to speak about the relevance of the plants they had been propagating on these sites to California people, mainly the northern Sierra, Miwok, where we're from.

Our family would have been in that area through trading, through other things. So I got to, got the honor of meeting her and found out about river partners and was blown away. And all I could think is, I got to work for these people because it connects on so many different levels for me.

Not necessarily just the restoration, not necessarily the animals and everything, but just the connection to my culture, the connection to how I grew up. My mother is a 7th generation, documented - only meaning since settlement, and people started counting- basket maker in California. We use a lot of the materials that are found at Dos Rios, the sedge and the willows. It's a different way of looking at things. We have biologists that can look and they can show you the insects and talk about the animals and talk about the plants.

When I walk around, I see baskets, I see food, I see all these things that my grandmother had talked about, what my parents, my mother had talked about. And it's not just Dos Rios, but the other state parks that can have this impact on the people, the native people of California.

The kind of realization I came to working for river partners, as we always talk about over the last hundred years, we've lost 95% of our riparian forests throughout the state. If you look at the population of California people, native people, we've lost 95%. Those numbers correlate. Our culture is directly linked. Sorry, directly linked to our environment.

So being able to create places like Dos Rios isn't just about more habitat. It's an opportunity to reconnect people, California native people, back with our culture, to give space for people to reconnect and relearn things that. We may have heard a story, but never had the space to go out and experience that.

And I've made several of these connections just working for River Partners here in the valley. I had heard my grandmother talk about things and then saw them finally, like, hey, that's what she was talking about.

So having these spaces to be able to come out and actually be on site and see and learn again about our culture is far more than somebody just sitting in a room like this and talking about it. So, sorry, I get emotional when I start talking about this, but it's the way I was raised.

I was not raised Christian or anything like that. I was raised in a roundhouse. I was raised with the culture that was shunned till 1978. The religious act, Native American Religious act. It was illegal to practice. My grandparents...boarding school...

All these things have been separated from families, and these parks and spaces are opportunities to bring those back, not to mention just the biodiversity. You know, actually, I mean, I'm used to. Sorry.

I'm more comfortable talking at Dos Rios in places like that, where, you know, we're standing around the trees, around the plants, and you can hear the quail in the background and the hawks and stuff. It's. I invite every one of you to come out.

Yes.

That's the only way you're going to experience it. To stand in something that was 10 years ago, an agricultural field, laser leveled with corn and winter wheat and everything else to what it is now. You know, that's one of my favorite questions for people is, how old do you think this is? Most people say 15-20 years old.

I'm like, that's only six years old. And the canopy's pushing 35, 40ft tall. You know, you can hear the animals out there, you can hear the insects if you're quiet and just listen. And that's what we lack in the cities.

So to get people out of the city, not necessarily just for, you know, refuge from the temperatures, which I will honestly say, you could be at Dos Rios at 11:00 at night, leave Dos Rios where it's 88 degrees, drive into Modesto and it's still 98 degrees, right? And that's just because we live in a concrete jungle for without another way to put it.

The radiant heat that's held in the cement, in the asphalt will radiate through the night. And that's why we don't see those lower temperatures in the cities.

But places like Dos Rios, people have that chance to get out and get away from that heat and experience, you know, something right out our back door. I mean, Dos Rios is 15 minutes, 12-15 minutes, depending on traffic, from my house in Modesto. And until I met River Partners, I had no idea it was there.

So it's amazing to be able to get people excited. My wife is an elementary school teacher, 6th grade teacher, and her students are so excited because they get to go visit Dos Rios, you know, and that's just from her talking about it.

So having spaces and places like Modesto and Grayson and Turlock that don't have access to this, it's a big deal.

Really want to extend that invitation, honestly to all of you and your networks and your friends to come visit the valley and feel what it feels like to step into kind of a future of California's water management.

Thank you so much. I know we will have some questions, and when you talk about the children, that's our future, and we need to make sure that they get to experience that. Thank you. Sara Barth, Executive Director of Sempervirens Fund.

Thank you, and it was going to be tough batting last no matter what. But that was amazing, amazing remarks and yes, to everything that has been said. And before I get into my more formal remarks, you guys have heard a lot.

And I thought maybe I just kind of cut to the chase on what I think is most important for you to hear out of my remarks. And I think it builds on some of the themes you heard today.

So just at the heart of all this, heart of all that I'm going to say to you in my comments, wildfire is here to stay. You know this, it's getting more extreme. Substitute drought, heat, all the other things. All these impacts of climate resilience are here in our state and beyond. Our parks are very vulnerable.

You've heard examples of that. I'm going to give you some examples. That's kind of a no brainer, maybe less of a no brainer, is that our communities are also vulnerable. And the fate of our parks and how we manage those parks for climate resilience is really directly tied to the fate of those communities.

You can't think about them separately we have to have a different mindset in how we think about parks and Dos Rios is a great example of that. About thinking about parks is not only places people can go to hike or cool off, but really how we manage that water system, how we manage the forests, I'm going to talk about is going to determine the fate of Santa Cruz or Modesto.

So I urge all of you to really open your minds to that different mindset as you think about the future of our state. And the remarkable thing is we have a state agency in California State Parks that is doing and saying the right things around climate resilience.

They know what needs to be done and they're moving in the right direction. Dos Rios is a fabulous example, but we should have 500 Dos Rios. That we haven't had a new state park in over a decade is insanity and irresponsible. And so partners can do a lot. You have been amazing partners.

My organization's been amazing partners, and we'll talk more on my remarks about that. But a lot more is going to be needed. And state parks and the natural resources agencies are fighting this battle with both hands tied behind their backs. And so I'm here today really to issue a call to action to all of you.

The Legislature needs to be a partner as well in supporting these efforts. So I'll move on to my remarks. But I just want to really hope to inspire you to take all of this thinking and see that there's a great opportunity here.

But it is going to require the leadership in the state, across the board, public sector, private sector, government to step up. So anyway, this hearing is part of that. Thank you very much for hosting it. Next slide, please. So I'm just going to go back for a minute in history, not to bore you.

We're not going back forever, but I work for Semperviren's Fund, which is an organization that's almost 125 years old. We were established in 1900. Why? We were established in response to the massive clear cutting of redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which is what we currently work to still protect, my organization. What did we do?

We donated 6 sq. miles of old growth redwoods that we bought, that the organization bought to the State of California, and that became California's first state park, Big Basin. That in turn spurred the creation of the state park system that we have today. So that's just to say we are a very old partner.

And there are other organizations that are old, longtime partners to State Parks. That whole approach was founded fundamentally in the mindset of preservation. We've got to protect these lands. Draw a line on a map, call it a park, do nothing, maybe build a visitor center, go and enjoy it.

That was such a radical shift at the time from the idea that those redwoods were a commodity that had only economic value. Right?

And I raise all of that both because I'm gonna highlight the importance of partners, but also because I think today we all have to have a similarly radical mind shift, very radical, in how we think about the role of state parks in the future of our communities. Next slide, please.

So it's not that sempervirens, we work in redwood forests, we pay very close attention to what's happening. It's not that we and others didn't know climate change was real. We knew. But redwoods are fire adapted ecosystem. They're pretty resilient if you've ever been in them. They're cool, they're damp.

Yes, they are fire adapted, but who would have thought? But then we got like slapped in the face by the CZU wildfire that happened in August of 2020. Next slide, please. And I don't even. It was like life before the fire and then life after the fire, not just for my organization, for my whole region.

And, you know, we could go on and on about what happened. What happened at Big Basin. The first state park, is pretty emblematic of what happened in the region. Nearly every acre burned. Douglas Fir Trees, once abundant in the park, are no longer in the park. They have been extirpated by that fire.

Almost all the infrastructure gone, trail system heavily impacted. It was literally catastrophic. Next slide, please. So that's bad, right? This is bad. But what's important to think about, we're here to talk about state parks, but you can't talk about state parks without talking about the surrounding communities, and not just the immediately surrounding, the broader communities.

1000 structures in my region destroyed. Nearly 700 people lost their homes, 700 families, 77,000 people evacuated during the fire. Like you could go on and on about how awful it was. And of course, as with so many things associated with climate change, disadvantaged communities, economically vulnerable communities were the hardest hit and least able to recover, and that applies still today.

Next slide, please. So it changed the landscape, it changed the community, and hopefully it certainly changed my mindset and everyone in the region, and I hope it will help change yours. That extreme wildfire, existential threat to some of these landscapes and some of the communities.

You cannot think about the future of a park like big basin or many of these other natural areas without thinking about the fate of your surrounding human communities. The mindset shift that I urge you to think about is we have to much more actively manage our state parks.

You can't draw a line around them and consider them safe. And I'm going to talk about forests because that's my heart and soul. But you heard the example of these riparian areas. It's true in almost any landscape that we're going to have to manage them differently and actively.

And a lot of people aren't going to like that idea, and it's expensive and it's hard, and the management of the landscape has to transcend the park boundaries. We've got to be thinking about and managing parks as part of the surrounding landscape.

So parks have a critical role in inspiring neighboring landowners to come together and work to manage the lands for climate resilience and community resilience. Next slide, please. So I was asked to talk about partners. I mentioned that Sempervirens is really like park's oldest partner. Our origin story is their origin story.

So let me tell you a little bit how we responded to the fire. Next slide, please. We leapt into action, and of course, one of the things that was needed most, not surprisingly, was money. We did. State Parks was very creative in the way they used the money that we raised from private sources.

I could go into all the things they did, but they did very sort of high touch management of the tree, of the old growth trees. We did things like fund showers so their work crew could get in there, things that the state wasn't able to fund. So we leveraged private.

They leveraged our private dollars and it allowed them to stretch their money. We also. It allowed them to act very quickly, which was necessary, in which state government sometimes churned slowly through things. Next slide, please. So moving beyond that, and that emergency response lasted for. It's still lasting. We're still giving them emergency response funds several years later.

Moving on to sort of the next phase of what to do and how we could support parks. We, Next slide, please. and others have mentioned this. We got deeply involved in planning for resilient parks. It's super unsexy. It's super unfun to be on these very many advisory committees. But why did we do it and why did other partners do it? Because we wanted to support parks in opening their minds to a different way of thinking about things.

Again, this mindset shift that I'm talking about, and to their credit, at least at Big Basin, they have been very innovative and very open minded about what they're calling reimagining. Big Basin. And we, as one of their oldest partners, have been a mouthpiece for them. And I hope that you all can be a mouthpiece for state parks.

When the public said, well, why would you want to do something dumb like that? Why would you want to have, you know, not recreate exactly what was there? So, and we've been on multiple committees and advisory roles to try to support state parks, as do many of our partners. Next slide, please.

One of the things that's probably counterintuitive, I said, we would like to see 50 Dos Rioses. We would. I'd like to see five more parks in my Santa Cruz district.

But it may be counter intuitive, but it is going to be really important to buy land to expand our parks strategically, either existing parks or to create new parks in order to respond to climate change and the threats it poses in Big Basin. We partnered with state parks.

They asked us and we sat down and created a tool with them to map out post fire Big Basin, Butano State Park, Ano Nuevo Park State Parks. It's a three part complex in our region. What is going to be needed, going forward to appropriately manage these parks for climate resilience.

And we mapped out land that would be need to be acquired. And there were really two reasons that in this particular area that land might need to be acquired.

One is they didn't want to put the facilities back in the heart of the old growth, where it was jeopardizing the old growth trees and creating a public safety hazard, having all these people in this very narrow, remote base. So they asked us to buy land adjacent to the existing park, which we did.

That could be transferred eventually to the state to be the site of these new visitor facilities. So some of it's just administrative, operational needs in light of climate change and wildfire specifically.

Some of it is: if you're going to manage forests and parks for wildfire resilience, you need to do large scale forest management, you need to do things like prescribe burning, and you need to have more buffer between communities and the parks.

To do that. So that involves buying land in wildland areas, not for visitors facilities, but because you want to create enough space to do the kind of burning and large scale forest management that's needed to protect those adjacent communities. Next slide, please.

So, and again, I think I mentioned this earlier, the other thing that we as partners have done over and over again, and what I hope you can help do is explain to the public why these things are important, what it is that the park is going to need, what is it going to take for Big Basin to be fully reopened, for instance, and be wildfire resilient.

As partners, one of the other things we've done is manage neighboring land. We are the second largest landowner in Santa Cruz County. So in addition to having spent 100 plus years helping to build big basin and many of the other parks in the region, we own a lot of forests, land like river partners owned land before it became state park. And how we manage that is going to directly impact those parks. Next slide, please.

So I'll just move quickly through these because you don't need to know the details, really, but just to know, as landowners, we do a bunch of fuel reduction, shaded fuel breaks. These are projects. Next slide, please. These are projects on private property that we own that's adjacent to the parks. We do it in coordination with the parks.

And these are lands that are likely to become future park land. And this is just. I included a bunch of pictures to give you a feel for what we mean when we say forests need to be actively managed. Right. It's not that you go in necessarily and you bulldoze the whole thing down.

Some of it's pretty light touch treatments, but it's thinning and removing the understory. So here's an example of what that looks like. Next slide, please. And that's a unit that's right next to Henry Cowell State park. Here's another one fuel reduction project that we did on a property we own adjacent to Big Basin.

We're in discussions right now about transferring this property to Big Basin eventually. Next slide, please. This is what it looks like. You can see it's really about. In this case, it's different in each landscape. It's about removing brush and understory that really accelerates the risk of severe wildfire. Next slide, please. Here's another example.

You can see the brush just clearing. I know there was comments years ago about raking the forest that were mocked appropriately, but it is about thinning and it's not raking, but clearing out some of the underbrush. Next slide, please.

So one of the other things that we're doing and that we encourage state parks to do and encourage you all to help support, because innovation in state government ain't always easy. Next slide, please. Is we own a large park size property, Sempervirens. Along with some of our partners. It's managed four way conservation partnership.

It's that big yellow slice called San Vicente Redwoods. Those other green lands in those maps are big basin and a series of other state parks and other protected lands in the area. So it's a very important region for conservation. Next slide, please.

We are managing this land by doing all kinds of the kinds of fuel breaks, prescribed burning, other activities that I've mentioned. Next slide, please. That includes once you do thinning, if you're not doing prescribed burning, you end up with a lot of trees on the ground, and you can't just leave them there, or you have a tremendous.

You've just enhanced the fire risk, which is counter to what you want to be doing, and so you have to do something with it. And some of the tools that we use are carbonators and air carton burners, which are these big. I think there's a picture. Next slide, please. You can see what they look like.

This, of course, looks much more like industrial activity.

And in a park like big basin, you can imagine that will not be popular, which is why I keep saying I think it's going to be important for folks like you to be champions in helping the public understand why some of this kind of activity is needed, even in our beloved parks, to save them and to save adjacent communities.

So what we do on San Vicente is, in part, modeling that behavior, experimenting, bringing in the research community from all the surrounding universities so we can learn about how to do this and demonstrate to state parks, who's just around the hill, how they might do it. Next slide, please.

And I think that's a really important role for partners. I've talked about this, but one of the biggest and most cost effective tools is prescribed burning. It really is the best way to mimic what would otherwise happen naturally.

It's the only way to get large scale wildfire risk reduction across the landscape, whether it's in a forest or other kind of ecosystem. It is incredibly hard to do because nobody wants smoke. The air regulators don't like it when you do it.

Community Members don't like it because they don't like the immediate, obvious impacts to them, which I don't blame them. And it takes special tools and special expertise. Next slide, please. To their credit - State Parks has been very innovative.

Again, you don't always hear this about government agencies, but State Parks has been a leader in advancing prescribed burning in places like Big Basin. And I want to show you why prescribed burning is so important.

You can see this is on our property, San Vicente, the before picture on the left, and you can see the just by way of an indicator of the PG and e power line that goes through the property that was before the fire. And you can see after the fire, you can see how much impact it had.

But if you look in the middle where the yellow line is pointing, you'll see that strip of green that still looks pretty vibrant. That's where we did a prescribed burn before the catastrophic CZU Wildfire. You see the difference, how vibrant it remains and how compared on either side to where we didn't do the treatment.

I can't stress enough how essential that's going to be to the future viability of our parks and the nearby communities. Next slide, please. So moving forward, and the role that I think the Legislature and other elected leaders can play is in part funding, funding, funding, funding.

We have insufficient funding to do prescribed burns and fuel breaks and things like that. It requires a high level of staffing and expertise. And state parks, I think with recent budget cuts, is having to put on hold a bunch of projects at Big Basin because big fuel reduction projects at Big Basin because of that.

And frankly, there are permitting and regulatory barriers, whether it's around air quality associated with prescribed burning or the use of these air curtain burners, but also other kinds of regulatory, for lack of a better word, barriers to doing some of this work.

It's going to require us coming together across public and private partnership and public and private land ownership. And that's not an easy thing for state parks or any entity to do.

It's hard for state parks to be a good partner, even to a long time partner like us, because of all the rules and restrictions that keep them from innovating.

And so I hope I invite you out to Big Basin, to San Vicente Redwoods, as well as following your trip to Dos Rios, to really see what it means on the ground, to see some of the innovation that the state park staff are willing to attempt and better understand how this body can help support accelerating these efforts, because I think they're critical to the future of our, of our communities.

I think that's it. I think that's my last slide. So thank you to both chairs for holding this hearing. It's such an important topic.

Well, thank you so much. I'd like to. Now I want to thank you. Honestly, these were great presentations. What's important about informational hearings like this is the ability to hear from those who can enlighten us, quite frankly, you're able to provide a different perspective.

Usually we have our documents that we're reviewing, and some of these are lived experiences that we get to see, but I'd like to open it up for questions. Madam Chair.

So thank you all for being here, and thank you for your ability to bring these topics to life in a boring conference room. We were going to imitate the quail. If you needed the backdrop, I was willing to do it.

And Miss Barth. I was copiously taking notes as to where I was going to ask questions. And I appreciate you covering how you're handling the biomass and your difficulties with regulators on the control burn, because it not only happens in parks, it actually happens in municipal areas, as you're all shaking your head, you know.

And I also was pleased to see, as I said, what you're doing with biomass. I'm very aware of the carbon that it emits.

And I recently had the privilege of going to look at some forests near Shasta and seeing what the US Forest Service does not do and to see what some private landowners are doing with some very surgical ways of doing cutting and the healthy forest that comes from there.

One of the things, if I can just bore you really quickly, was we looked at the circumference or diameter of a tree, and they were both the same age, but where you had some really close knit trees, a 75 year old tree wasn't much bigger than this.

Where a tree had an opportunity to grow, a 75 year old tree was larger than I could get my arms around. So it was a real eye opener. But I am aware of the biomass part of it, and there's so much happening.

I was just a hearing earlier today that deals with biomass and what we can do with it and so many innovative ways that folks are using it, whether we're going to bury it because of its carbon inefficiencies or turn it into fuel. There's a lot of creative things out there, so stay tuned.

And I'm hopeful that the state parks can come into that fold because you're easy ground for us, certainly. But I want to come back to land acquisition. You talked about land acquisition, and I know we have Dos Rios. And first of all, how did you acquire your land? You must have had donated land.

Yeah, we secured competitive grants, actually, from nine different public programs to buy Dos Rios from a private landowner. Willing landowner.

By appraisal.

Come again?

Okay. And how was the price determined? I'm just curious.

Fair market value.

It was fair market value. Okay, very interesting. So you'll have to. And you applied for grant money to get it. And have you done that with some of the land you're looking at? As I understand it, there are people that are around to help acquire the land. It's the maintenance thereafter that is the bigger issue.

There's a lot of people want to see their land conserved and they kept it in the family and they're ready to just give it to somebody to take over. But the expense is really in all the other stuff. But, okay, you were going to answer.

Yeah. There are people who are willing to donate land. There's a lot of organizations like ours that go get grants or have private donations to buy land and are ready to transfer it to State Parks. But the process of transferring to State Parks is difficult, even when state parks is receptive. Why is that?

Why is that?

Well, they have a pretty elaborate review process that they need to go through that involves not only their own internal review and real estate staff, but also going through DGS and the Public Works Board. And things can go into a black box and sort of be die for years at a time.

And so it's very, very hard and it creates disincentives for partners like us to want to continue to work with State Parks because it's just very difficult.

Well, we'll have to talk to them about that. That reminds me of a constituent that's been at it for five years trying to help sell someone. I had just forgotten until this very moment. Okay, well, that's something we can certainly take a look at.

I mean, if it's bottlenecked on our end and the money is there and you've acquired it and you're ready to donate it.

It's a set of bureaucratic processes.

Which is why I was stressing, I think, to the degree this, this body can help support state parks in innovation and expediting some of the work that needs to be done, whether it's land acquisition or prescribed burns or whatever, that's an essential role you can play to help encourage. You know, lots of cool things are happening around the state because of partners and innovation, little pockets of innovation among the agencies staff.

But you all can help highlight that, tell stories about it, explain it to your constituents, and help support some of the regulatory relief or other streamlining that can help make this work more happen more quickly.

Certainly, certainly.

And then the other thing is, if you have a state park that abuts some of our respective districts, especially comes to mind a sea level rise, if you're going to do some gray berm or whatever it is to help, that abuts some of, I know some of your cities, some of my cities, there is the ability hopefully, to work with those local jurisdictions, and I'll be keeping my eye on that as well.

So anyway, thank you all for your hard work, your passion and of course, the recharging of the aquifer made me very excited. Because that's something as you know, groundwater sustainability. We're working on like nobody's business. So I'm glad to see that Dos Rios is a win, win win,win. Okay, that's enough for me.Thank you.

Specifically the video on the aquifer. That was not the video. The graphic. Yes. Mister Hart.

Well, I'm trying to think of a question because I have so much to say. But I think really what I want to emphasize is how powerful your vision is. About what we should be doing. Doing. And how daunting and inspiring the scope of change that's required.

And when I heard that Dos Rios is the first state park in 10 years. It made me pause and think, you know, that is not going to meet the challenge going forward. We are obviously constrained by resources. And that's something that, you know, is primary in our job.

Is to figure out a way to get the state balance, state budget. In a place where we can make the investments that we need to do. There's plenty of willing partners. There's plenty of vision, there's plenty of opportunities. But ultimately it does come down to money. We need money to manage these lands.

We need money for the science to figure out what the best use of the strategies that we're doing. And we need to quicken the pace. The 30 by 30 challenge that we're going. I was doing the math. It's about a million acres a year.

And it's going to take a lot of creativity and a lot of more than just waiting for community organizations to rally to preserve and protect the spaces in their communities. We need state leadership and we need national leadership, honestly. And there's opportunities there to do that.

But I just want to conclude, because I don't actually have a question, I think you've raised so many issues that we could spend hours talking about this. And I'm really grateful for the chairs to have brought us together here to highlight these issues.

It really is important first to highlight these issues and to really put the spotlight of the state Legislature on what you're doing and what we need to do. But I think all Californians have a deep investment in our natural lands and our state parks. It really is the history of our state.

It is why, when you talk about living in California, people have an image in their mind immediately. The redwoods and it's the coast and it's the Central Valley and all the beautiful places, the mountains.

And it is so important for us to recognize our role in a multi-generational effort to preserve and protect and restore those lands, and it's time for us to step up to that task. So thank you for being here today. Thank you for the work that you're doing. We're committed to being partners with you.

Thank you.

I also want to thank you so much for the information you've provided, I think, to what you were talking about, Emily, about community engagement, about these shade stations. And we're not doing it just to have it. We're doing it because we want the community to know this is available to them. This is their land. It doesn't belong.

They are the state, and we have to make sure that they know that it belongs to them. Dos Rios. We have a Conservation Corps in my area, and they had sent up a dozen of the students up to your land to work there.

And I met with them just recently, and they were sharing with me, pitching tents and walking in those boots in the mud, just how much they enjoyed it earlier. I think it was Madeleine that talked about justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. And when we're talking about that, that's really what the state parks are about.

And that's the reason that I wanted to be involved in this with this Select Committee, because I want state parks to be something that everybody recognizes as part of where they can go. It belongs to them. And they get to go and they get to visit.

They get to sit in the shade or they get to go into the water. I'm not from a coastal town. I'm from the Inland Empire. We've got to drive a distance before we can get to water. And I want my community to also benefit from all of this.

I want them, you know, we do have a state park, and we took many of our young legislators up to visit. And for many of them, they had never been to a state park.

That, for me, is very sad because that's a part of our collective culture, and they need to know that this is where their ancestors have been.

And then to hear Austin, to hear you talk about very specifically your grandmother talking about this area, and for you now to be able to, you were saying, and I forget how you said it, but everybody else was looking at identifying different things, and you were looking at saying, there's a basket, there's food.

I want all of our children to experience that. I want them to know what our land was like and how rich it is in culture and in so many different ways. What you offer here today is important.

It's important for us as legislators, as policymakers to hear this and to find ways, just as my colleague said, too, it's that budget, right? First comments, and this has been her since she got here. She says, don't tell me about all the good things you want to do.

Tell me where you're going to find it in the budget. And that is true. But a budget is a reflection of our values, and so we need to find ways to fund the very things that you're talking about. I often have problems with biomass.

I've sat on a number of committees having to do with wildfires and over the years, since I arrived eight years ago. And that is so tough for me. But I also recognize that that's something that we have to accept. The fires, the controlled fires. We're told that the native peoples used to do that.

So if they were able to do that, then we need to be able to go back and figure out how did we do it. The first peoples did it. We need to learn so that we can then have land that is not going to go up in flames because of all the fuel we're leaving on the ground.

So I also don't have a question. I just want to thank you so much, and I look forward to, to continuing these conversations. Please know that not only the three of us, you saw assemblymember Quirk Silva, our Vice Chair, Devon Mathis. We're available to you, and you raised your eyebrows.

Okay, I'm calling you, but we are available to you. We want to be part of the solution. And whether it's in the budget that we try to find ways or it's in policy, we are available to you. We want to be able to work with you.

And again, I want to thank you so much for being here, all of you. Thank you so much. All right, now we, yes. So now we're going to take comments, public comments. If there are any public comments. If not, then I would invite our other two speakers, and your speakers, if you'll come here also.

Thank you so much. This concludes our informational hearing, our joint informational hearing with Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee and the Select Committee on State Parks.