Latest news with #CaliforniaNaturalResourcesAgency
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Revolutionary government program raises $28 billion, and millions of one state's residents are benefiting: 'A win for ordinary people'
In 2012, California set a precedent for how a state government can take action against planet-warming pollution. The result of these actions diverted billions of dollars to communities in need across the state. California created a cap-and-trade program, which set a limit on carbon emissions that was to decline every year until the end of the contract in 2030. It also required companies to purchase permits or "allowances" to cover their carbon emissions. Companies that needed to go over their allowance could trade with other companies, but overall, the program created an economic incentive for companies to move forward with cleaner policies that reduced pollution. The fees from these allowances were then distributed across multiple agencies, including the California Natural Resources Agency's Urban Greening Program. One of the most remarkable projects created with this funding was a living schoolyard in Oakland, made possible with a $1.2 million grant from the CNRA. What used to be an asphalt lot was turned into vegetable gardens, a pollinator garden, an outdoor classroom, grass fields, and 65 new trees. Since 2012, this program has brought in $28 billion, $11.6 billion of which has already been translated into community projects. California residents are also now seeing an average of $137 in savings on their utility bills through the California Climate Credit. This program is eligible to be renewed and extended until 2045. If California lawmakers choose to extend it, residents can expect to see $47 billion in revenue, $55 billion in economic growth for California, and an additional 287,000 jobs. "California's cap-and-trade program hasn't just been a win for the climate; it's been a win for ordinary people who can see in their neighborhoods and on their utility bills that it's paying off. And there's billions more to come if we get this right," said Caroline Jones, a climate policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund. Whether it's investing in solar panels, food security, or bike lanes for crowded urban areas, it's been proven that the happiest people and countries in the world are the ones in areas of less pollution and with stronger community programs. This program was spotlighted in the Environmental Defense Fund's Vital Signs newsletter, which is a stellar source for good-news stories, climate change solutions, and advice for taking action in your own community. Do you think America has a plastic waste problem? Definitely Only in some areas Not really I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
First layers of soil to be laid on 101 Freeway wildlife crossing, the world's largest
The wildlife crossing designed to help mountain lions, deer, bobcats and other creatures safely travel over the 101 Freeway between the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains will reach a major milestone on Monday, as workers lay the first layers of soil on the overpass. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing spans the 10-lane freeway in Agoura Hills and will become the largest such crossing in the world. It is designed to help animals avoid being killed while roaming in urban habitats. Although it is too late to help Los Angeles' beloved mountain lion P-22 expand his territory, the passage will allow mountain lions and other wildlife to range farther for food and mates. Read more: P-22, L.A. celebrity mountain lion, euthanized due to severe injuries Small puma populations have been isolated by the freeway, and their offspring were showing signs of birth defects. 'I imagine a future for all the wildlife in our area where it's possible to survive and thrive and the placement of this first soil on the bridge means another step closer to reality,' Annenberg, a philanthropist, said in a statement. 'This extraordinary structure will serve not only animals," she said, "but it will reconnect an entire ecosystem and protect this global biodiversity hotspot — this moment marks another wonderful milestone toward that goal.' The Annenberg family's foundation was a major donor to the $92-million effort to make the bridge — which stands 21 feet and 8 inches above the freeway — a reality. Initially conceived more than three decades ago, construction of the 200-foot-long,165-foot-wide bridge began in 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2026. Read more: The world's largest wildlife crossing is finally standing. Here is what's coming next 'There's been a growing awareness in California as we're working to protect our nature, our biodiversity, that we can't just restore and protect habitat; We actually have to build connectivity between habitat,' Wade Crowfoot, secretary for the California Natural Resources Agency, said earlier when the project was announced. Monday morning, workers will begin placing soil — sandy loam mixed with lightweight volcanic aggregate — on the wildlife overpass. The process is expected to take several weeks and will require 6,000 cubic yards of soil, enough to cover three-quarters of an American football field in about 2.5 feet of soil. Then, coastal sage, buckwheat, wild grape, wildflowers, milkweed and other native plants will be planted on the roughly one-acre habitat. Oaks and other trees and plants will be planted on 12 acres on both sides of the wildlife crossing. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
31-03-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
First layers of soil to be laid on 101 Freeway wildlife crossing, the world's largest
The wildlife crossing designed to help mountain lions, deer, bobcats and other creatures safely travel over the 101 Freeway between the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains will reach a major milestone on Monday, as workers lay the first layers of soil on the overpass. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing spans the 10-lane freeway in Agoura Hills and will become the largest such crossing in the world. It is designed to help animals avoid being killed while roaming in urban habitats. Although it is too late to help Los Angeles' beloved mountain lion P-22 expand his territory, the passage will allow mountain lions and other wildlife to range farther for food and mates. Small puma populations have been isolated by the freeway, and their offspring were showing signs of birth defects. 'I imagine a future for all the wildlife in our area where it's possible to survive and thrive and the placement of this first soil on the bridge means another step closer to reality,' Annenberg, a philanthropist, said in a statement. 'This extraordinary structure will serve not only animals,' she said, 'but it will reconnect an entire ecosystem and protect this global biodiversity hotspot — this moment marks another wonderful milestone toward that goal.' The Annenberg family's foundation was a major donor to the $92-million effort to make the bridge — which stands 21 feet and 8 inches above the freeway — a reality. Initially conceived more than three decades ago, construction of the 200-foot-long,165-foot-wide bridge began in 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2026. 'There's been a growing awareness in California as we're working to protect our nature, our biodiversity, that we can't just restore and protect habitat; We actually have to build connectivity between habitat,' Wade Crowfoot, secretary for the California Natural Resources Agency, said earlier when the project was announced. Monday morning, workers will begin placing soil — sandy loam mixed with lightweight volcanic aggregate — on the wildlife overpass. The process is expected to take several weeks and will require 6,000 cubic yards of soil, enough to cover three-quarters of an American football field in about 2.5 feet of soil. Then, coastal sage, buckwheat, wild grape, wildflowers, milkweed and other native plants will be planted on the roughly one-acre habitat. Oaks and other trees and plants will be planted on 12 acres on both sides of the wildlife crossing.
CBC
11-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Karuk Tribe right to cultural burning affirmed in agreement with California
The Karuk Tribe of northern California recently became the first to reach an agreement with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials to practise cultural burns. Bill Tripp, Karuk Tribe's director of natural resources and environmental policy, said the agreement reflects the state's recognition of the community's sovereignty. "The whole fire exclusion paradigm has impacted our rights," Tripp said. "Now we get a lot of very large wildfires today and there's a lot of reasons for that, but fundamentally at the root of it all is the fact that it's been so long since some of these places have burned." He said they've been burning in and around their traditional lands since time immemorial and fire prevention campaigns such as Smokey the Bear instilled a fear of fire in society — one that has allowed for the accumulation of wildfire fuel. He also pointed to other contributing factors like extreme and unprecedented weather patterns and the Weeks Act of 1911, a federal law that established the eastern national forests and the first co-operative wildland firefighting effort, and outlawed some Native American fire management practices in the U.S. Tripp said historically, his people would have roughly 7,000 fires per year to burn off fuel such as dead branches and leaves and to help shape and regenerate the landscape. Indigenous stewardship In Canada, Natural Resources Transfer Acts in 1930 transferred control over Crown lands and natural resources from the Government of Canada to the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Wildfire consultant Brady Highway, a member of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Sask., said these agreements removed First Nations' right to steward their territory and that extreme wildfires impact their inherent rights. "We are dependent on the land, on a healthy landscape in order for us to hunt and, and fish and gather the foods and medicines that we need," Highway said. "Without a healthy environment, our inherent rights are being impacted." He said he considers the process of applying for burn permits similar to having a duty to consult the province, "when the province regularly imposes regulations, legislation, land use policies on us without that same courtesy of consulting with us." Firekeeper Joe Gilchrist, a member of Skeetchestn Indian Band near Kamloops B.C., recently attended a First Nations Emergency Services cultural burning workshop in Cranbrook, B.C., ahead of this year's wildfire season. He said burn permits are not always practical because it's difficult to set a date to have a fire. "If we did a cultural burn then we would go out on the land every morning and then we would know when it's time to burn," he said. "There's lots of different signs which can't necessarily be projected." He said he's seen wildfires become progressively worse since he was young. "There used to be a pattern where about every four to seven years you'd have a bad fire year," he said. "Just in the 2000s, you start to see that it's almost every year now that the fires are bad." Gilchrist said he supports the direction the state of California's taking and believes a similar approach to cultural burns could work here in Canada. He said fire prevention through cultural burns would be much less expensive than the cost of fire suppression. "[The land] needs fire to be healthy," Gilchrist said.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
California tribe enters first-of-its-kind agreement with the state to practice cultural burns
Northern California's Karuk Tribe has for more than a century faced significant restrictions on cultural burning — the setting of intentional fires for both ceremonial and practical purposes, such as reducing brush to limit the risk of wildfires. That changed this week, thanks to legislation championed by the tribe and passed by the state last year that allows federally recognized tribes in California to burn freely once they reach agreements with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials. The tribe announced Thursday that it was the first to reach such an agreement with the agency. 'Karuk has been a national thought leader on cultural fire,' said Geneva E.B. Thompson, Natural Resources' deputy secretary for tribal affairs. 'So, it makes sense that they would be a natural first partner in this space because they have a really clear mission and core commitment to get this work done.' In the past, cultural burn practitioners first needed to get a burn permit from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a department within the Natural Resources Agency, and a smoke permit from the local air district. The law passed in September 2024, SB 310, allows the state government to, respectfully, 'get out of the way' of tribes practicing cultural burns, said Thompson. For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement, tribal leaders say, essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty. Now, collaboration can happen through a proper government-to-government relationship. The Karuk Tribe estimates that, conservatively, its more than 120 villages would complete at least 7,000 burns each year before contact with European settlers. Some may have been as small as an individual pine tree or patch of tanoak trees. Other burns may have spanned dozens of acres. 'When it comes to that ability to get out there and do frequent burning to basically survive as an indigenous community,' said Bill Tripp, director for the Karuk Tribe Natural Resource Department, 'one: you don't have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.' The Karuk Tribe's ancestral territory extends along much of the Klamath River in what is now the Klamath National Forest, where its members have fished for salmon, hunted for deer and collected tanoak acorns for food for thousands of years. The tribe, whose language is distinct from that of all other California tribes, is currently the second largest in the state, having more than 3,600 members. The history of the government's suppression of cultural burning is long and violent. In 1850, California passed a law that inflicted any fines or punishments a court found 'proper' on cultural burn practitioners. In a 1918 letter to a forest supervisor, a district ranger in the Klamath National Forest — in the Karuk Tribe's homeland — suggested that to stifle cultural burns, 'the only sure way is to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him.' For Thompson, the new law is a step toward righting those wrongs. 'I think SB 310 is part of that broader effort to correct those older laws that have caused harm, and really think through: How do we respect and support tribal sovereignty, respect and support traditional ecological knowledge, but also meet the climate and wildfire resiliency goals that we have as a state?' she said. The devastating 2020 fire year triggered a flurry of fire-related laws that aimed to increase the use of intentional fire on the landscape, including — for the first time — cultural burns. The laws granted cultural burns exemptions from the state's environmental impact review process and created liability protections and funds for use in the rare event that an intentional burn grows out of control. 'The generous interpretation of it is recognizing cultural burn practitioner knowledge,' said Becca Lucas Thomas, an ethnic studies lecturer at Cal Poly and cultural burn practitioner with the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. 'In trying to get more fire on the ground for wildfire prevention, it's important that we make sure that we have practitioners who are actually able to practice.' The new law, aimed at forming government-to-government relationships with Native tribes, can only allow federally recognized tribes to enter these new agreements. However, Thompson said it will not stop the agency from forming strong relationships with unrecognized tribes and respecting their sovereignty. 'Cal Fire has provided a lot of technical assistance and resources and support for those non-federally recognized tribes to implement these burns,' said Thompson, 'and we are all in and fully committed to continuing that work in partnership with the non-federally-recognized tribes.' Cal Fire has helped Lucas Thomas navigate the state's imposed burn permit process to the point that she can now comfortably navigate the system on her own, and she said Cal Fire handles the tribe's smoke permits. Last year, the tribe completed its first four cultural burns in over 150 years. 'Cal Fire, their unit here, has been truly invested in the relationship and has really dedicated their resources to supporting us,' said Lucas Thomas, 'with their stated intention of, 'we want you guys to be able to burn whenever you want, and you just give us a call and let us know what's going on.'' This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
