Challenges and opportunities posed by a major factor of global change — and creative ways of responding

Online version of a paper by Ted Trzyna published in 2007 by

IUCN (international Union for Conservation of Nature) and the

California Institute of Public Affairs / InterEnvironment

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SECTION 4 OF THE WEB VERSION (WEB PAGE URB-4)

d.  THE CALIFORNIAS (MEXICO-USA)

Introduction 

“The Californias” refers to the state of California in the USA and the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur in Mexico. Together, as the crow flies, they stretch 2,500 km along the Pacific Ocean, with the Mexican portion forming a long peninsula separated from the mainland by the Sea of Cortés. 

This case study concentrates on the U.S. state of California and the northern part of the Mexican state of Baja California. Both states are divided between Mediterranean-type ecosystems along the coast, and desert ecosystems in the interior. Like South Africa’s Cape Floristic Region, described above, these Mediterranean-type ecosystems, which comprise the California Floristic Province, are one of 34 global biodiversity “hotspots” identified by Conservation International (2006).    

The rate and scale of population growth in the U.S. state of California is like that found in many developing countries. It has risen from 1.5 million in 1900 to an estimated 37 million in 2006, and is projected to increase to 65 million by 2050. This rate of growth is without parallel in any area of similar size in the world (411,000 sq km, roughly the size of Sweden or Zimbabwe). It is almost entirely a product of immigration from other U.S. states and other countries. About 94% of the population is urban (CDOF 2005). Over 55% of California is in protected areas (Trzyna 2001, 4).

Baja California’s current population is 3.5 million. Immigration from other Mexican states and Central America has been a major factor in its growth. The population is 91.6% urban. A relatively small part of the state is in protected areas, mostly in the desert or well to the south of the border.

Protected areas along a troubled border

The international boundary is a straight line running eastward from the Pacific Ocean across rugged mountains and canyons and down a steep escarpment to the desert floor. The focus in this paper is on the Mediterranean-type ecosystem west of that escarpment. It is a region very rich in biodiversity, including numerous endemic plant and animal species. The Biodiversity Research Center of the Californias at the San Diego Natural History Museum monitors these species in a binational context.  

On the north, U.S., side of the boundary, San Diego County has 3.1 million people and is projected to grow to 3.8 million by 2030. South of the border is the municipality of Tijuana, which has 1.8 million people and is projected to grow to 3.2 million by 2040. (In 1950, San Diego County had 556,000 people; Tijuana had only 65,000.)  

There is wealth and poverty on both sides of the line, but the difference in per-capita income across an international border is unparalleled anywhere in the world. According to 1999 data, the Tijuana municipality had a per-capita gross regional product equivalent to U.S. $6,800, while San Diego County’s was $29,488, a ratio of 4.34:1 (Kada and Kiy 2004). Much of Tijuana’s growth is in hillside shantytowns that, once built, are protected from demolition by Mexican law (Ouroussoff 2006).

There are also cultural and language differences. Mexico is Spanish-speaking and has a distinct form of Latin American culture; California’s dominant culture is English-speaking but the state is increasingly multi-cultural; it has no ethnic majority.

If economic, cultural, and language differences were not enough, the challenges of creating and managing protected areas in this fast-growing binational urban complex are exacerbated by illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Organized crime in Tijuana is “out of control,” its mayor recently said; Tijuana’s rate of kidnappings ranks among the world’s worst (Enriquez and Marosi 2006). There is also political tension between the two countries over border matters. Currently, this focuses on U.S. plans to build a triple fence, 3 m high, along its side of the border in an attempt to stop illegal immigration and smuggling. The fence would interfere with wildlife migration and water flow.

Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve

At the ocean between San Diego and Tijuana, just north of the border, is the 10-sq-km Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve (IUCN Category IV), owned and managed by several national, California state, and local government agencies. The primary land managers are California State Parks and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The property is a Ramsar site (Ramsar 2006).

The reserve is dominated by coastal salt marshes, dunes, riparian corridors, and coastal tablelands. Overall, this estuary is relatively intact compared to others in the southern part of California. However, the Tijuana River, which feeds it, flows through the Mexican cities of Tecate and Tijuana before entering the U.S. about eight km east of the ocean. Almost three-quarters of its watershed lies within Mexico.

Major challenges in managing this reserve relate to sewage and urban runoff from Tijuana and Tecate. This pollution also affects ocean water quality; it flows northward in the strong California Current, joining more urban outflow from San Diego and Los Angeles. Those using southern California’s beaches, all of them protected areas, are seriously affected by sewage from both countries. Bacterial pollution sickens as many as 1.5 million swimmers and surfers annually in the region and results in millions of dollars in health-care costs (Polakovic 2006). To deal with the Tijuana estuary problem, the U.S. government, with funds from both national governments, built a sewage treatment plant on the U.S. side of the border to treat effluent from Tijuana; however, the plant, which opened in 1997, can handle only half of the effluent generated by Tijuana and meets only a minimal, primary-stage, standard for treatment.  

In addition, sedimentation from the stripping of vegetation from Tijuana hillsides adjacent to the reserve has filled in parts of the marsh. Invasive species are a serious problem, as they are in most California wetlands. Of most concern is tamarisk (Tamarix spp.), which forms three-meter-high thickets. Previously restricted to freshwater areas, it has only recently adapted to salt marshes and has the potential to change the physical structure and food web of such ecosystems.    

The reserve is responding to these challenges by carefully monitoring water quality, vegetation, and wildlife; restoring filled marshes; and controlling invasive plant species as best it can (NOAA 2005). The reserve also has an active educational program linked to local school systems, and participates in a binational exchange that connects students in schools in Mexico and the U.S. by computer to exchange real-time information from monitoring flights of migratory birds along North America’s Pacific Flyway. 

There are numerous binational organizations — official, quasi-official, and unofficial — coping with cross-border environmental problems. One of them is the Border 2012 Tijuana Watershed Task Force, whose participants are national, state, and local government agencies in both countries, as well as NGOs and universities. Among its aims are protection of the estuary and undeveloped parts of the catchment. Its main tangible product to date is a bilingual atlas (Wright, Vela, et al. 2005), which covers physical, biological, and human aspects of the watershed in detail. The process of producing the atlas was an important step in itself; it required communication and consultation that eventually led to collaboration. The process also forced task force members to look beyond political boundaries and their compartmented responsibilities to see the watershed as a system of interacting components.   

Urbanization is moving inland along both sides of the border. Little land on the Mexican side is protected. On the U.S. side, there are several national, state, and local protected areas, but they are physically and administratively fragmented. Good opportunities still exist to protect substantial areas along both sides of the border, and connect existing reserves, but authorities have been slow to act.

To move decision-makers toward a coordinated conservation strategy and action, Mexican and U.S. NGOs have launched Las Californias Binational Conservation Initiative. Las Californias (“The Californias”) focuses on biodiversity conservation in an area that includes, but goes well beyond, the Tijuana River watershed. It is led by Pronatura, a major Mexican NGO, and The Nature Conservancy, a major U.S.-based NGO that has offices in Mexico, with scientific support from the Conservation Biology Institute. Its main product to date is a “vision” for habitat conservation in the border region (LC 2004) that has a major focus on existing and proposed protected areas. 

In both California and Baja California, many of those involved in these and other cross-border conservation efforts are frustrated that so much effort has gone into data collection, mapping, and strategizing, with very little results on the ground. They are also frustrated with the large number of overlapping binational efforts and having to attend their meetings.  

There are several barriers to progress:

·         The region is distant from the capitals of both countries, and getting the national governments to give its problems sustained attention has been difficult.

·         Those involved from both countries have little awareness of transboundary conservation elsewhere in the world (IUCN 2006e) and, when informed of it, believe it has little relevance to their work.

·         Land ownership patterns and conservation mechanisms differ significantly between California and Baja California.

·         In Mexico, land ownership records are often unclear, making it difficult for agencies and NGOs to acquire land.

·         As in many countries, Mexico does not have strong traditions of voluntarism or philanthropy.

However, there is good conservation leadership in both countries and many of those involved are bilingual and often bicultural. There are strong personal relationships across this troubled border, and a deep fund of good will.

Fragmentation and wildlife migration corridors

One of the problems caused by urbanization along the border between California and Baja California, and the planned border fence, is interference with wildlife migration. In much more populous California, connectivity between protected areas has become a major concern. This is because most protected areas were not designed to care for biodiversity, but rather for water-supply or flood control purposes, to preserve landscapes, or to provide opportunities for outdoor recreation. This is further complicated by administrative fragmentation. Protected areas are managed by many different national, state, and local agencies. Their boundaries commonly follow the rectilinear cadastral system used in California, rather than watersheds or other natural features. Their managers spend much of their time on inter-agency coordination. And, in some cases, cooperation is constrained by long-standing institutional rivalries (Trzyna 2001, 11).

The Missing Linkages initiative, launched in 2000, is a coordinated effort to “systematically identify, study, and protect wildlife corridors” in California. Its participants are national and California state agencies and several conservation NGOs (Penrod 2000). Missing Linkages has led to very specific studies that identify parcels of land required for habitat linkages. Some of these studies relate to the protected areas described below and have been conducted by an NGO called South Coast Wildlands (SCW 2006). Wildlife corridors are needed not only for large mammals that range over  extensive territories, but also for migration of many types of plants and smaller animals that often occurs over many generations.      

Los Angeles: Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area

Greater Los Angeles has 18 million people, making it ninth among the world’s urban agglomerations. Although the urbanized core has relatively few conventional or natural parks, it is framed by extensive protected areas: along the ocean by state and local beaches and coastal parks; in the interior by mountainous national forests and a desert national park (Joshua Tree, described separately below).

Unique in this context is the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (IUCN Category V), established in 1978, which protects 623 sq km of a mountain range that extends from the heart of Los Angeles to the ocean. Rising from sea level to 950 meters, its predominant vegetation is chaparral, a dense growth of various species of evergreen, hard-leaved shrubs.

Within a framework administered by the U.S. National Park Service, the NRA is a cooperative effort. The largest landowner is California State Parks, followed by NPS and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Local agencies, NGOs, private landowners, and a university are also involved. Over the past 25 years, open space around the NRA boundary has gradually filled in with residential and commercial development. This is dramatically shown in a series of high-definition satellite images assembled by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA 2006) that are a very useful tool for educating decision-makers. Within the NRA, this fill-in has increased edge effects.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is an unusual California state agency set up in 1979 and given special acquisition powers out of concern that the national government was acting too slowly to acquire private lands for the NRA in a fast-rising real estate market. It has become highly skilled and proactive at acquiring land and making it accessible by combining funding from different sources and forming partnerships with other agencies and NGOs.     

Fire along the wildland-urban interface is a major challenge in the Mediterranean-type ecosystems of the Californias. From May until November and sometimes later, there is virtually no precipitation in this region. Toward the end of the dry season, fires increase dramatically. Caused by lightning, accident, or arson, they periodically burn large areas of the mountains in and around cities, often resulting in death and destruction of homes. Such fires have increased in number and extent in the last few years, and the risk of large wildfires is expected to increase due to climate change (Luers et al. 2006, 10). Protected area agencies have no control over construction on private land next to, or even within, their boundaries; regulatory authority lies with local governments that are often reluctant to interfere with property rights.

There are human-wildlife conflicts in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, especially along the edges of protected areas. Coyote (Canis latrans, a wild dog) are common. Long notorious for preying on pets, they now seem to be losing their natural fear of humans, occasionally attacking small children and even entering supermarkets. State wildlife officers kill aggressive coyotes because relocating them has been found to be ineffective (Rivenburg 2006).

Mountain lion (Puma concolor), roam the mountains and foothills and can attack humans, although this happens very rarely; only six fatalities have been reported since 1890 in all of California. There is strong public support for protecting this impressive animal (adult males usually weigh 70-120 kg) and in 1990 California voters approved a measure put on the ballot by petition that bans hunting mountain lion. Conservation agencies, NGOs, and natural history museums educate the public about the species. The Santa Monica Mountains NRA has had a key role here. Since 2002, its scientists have monitored the movement and behavior of eight mountain lions with radio-collars and GPS tracking devices. Results are often reported in the local press, sometimes on newspapers’ front pages.       

Los Angeles: Little places with big results

Outside the mountains, two protected area agencies, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and California State Parks, work with others to preserve, restore, and make accessible the few remnants of nature that still exist in densely urbanized Los Angeles. These remnants are mainly on low hills and along rivers and streams that were paved for flood-control purposes starting in the 1930s.

Small urban nature reserves such as these are found in many cities. Although they have little visibility in the international conservation community, they play a critical role. They provide children with the direct experience of nature they need for healthy intellectual and emotional development. They also help protect remote large-scale natural areas: if people haven’t experienced nature, they are much less likely to care about it.      

Both agencies are also involved in creating “natural parks” in poorer areas of Los Angeles. The idea for the first such park came from Rita Walters, a city council member who represented a low-income part of the city. From their homes, her constituents could look up at the Santa Monica Mountains, but few of them went there (a similar situation in Cape Town is described above). Large amounts of public money had gone into preserving those mountains; couldn’t nature be brought to their neighborhoods? Walters went to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which responded by converting a 3.5-hectare disused municipal storage yard into a “natural park.”

The Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park opened in 2001. Situated in a rundown, high-crime neighborhood, it was designed in consultation with the people who live there. The park is not a restoration, but rather a “reflection” of the natural ecosystems of the region. (In other places, this would be seen as an opportunity to recreate the original vegetation, but in this case the original landscape was an alluvial plain thinly covered with shrubs and grasses that would be uninteresting at such a small scale.)  Nevertheless, nature in some ways is taking its course; for example, indigenous plants have created habitat for birds rarely seen in urban settings. The park has a visitor center, hosts school and other youth groups, and sponsors free outings to mountain protected areas. Operations were transferred to the municipal government in 2005.      

Among its strategic objectives, the Conservancy now lists: “Expand efforts to integrate nature into the urban environment.” There are plans to replicate the Hawkins Park elsewhere in the city, including on the grounds of a new secondary school (Trzyna 2005b, 107-110).

The desert: Joshua Tree National Park

East of metropolitan Los Angeles is a classic example of ribbon development leading to urban sprawl around a protected area. Joshua Tree National Park (IUCN Category II) preserves 3,196 sq km of desert mountains, three quarters of which is designated as wilderness. It was established in 1936 as a national monument and elevated to national park status in 1994. It receives about 1.2 million visitors a year.

The park’s signature species, the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) is an unusual member of the agave family that has stiff, sharp-pointed leaves and reaches 3 meters or more in height; each tree forms thick, rigid branches in its own unique way. Several animals are specifically dependent on Joshua trees, including a moth, a lizard, and several birds. There are also five palm oases scattered through the park (of the California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera). Depending on winter rainfall, there can be spectacular spring wildflowers. Altitude ranges from 163 m to 1,772 m.

On the south side of the park is the already urbanized Palm Springs area where, in some places, houses are being built right up to the park boundary.

The ribbon development is happening on the north side of the park, in the Morongo Basin, where there is still a chance to create buffer zones between growing towns and the park boundary, and preserve wildlife corridors to other protected areas farther to the north.

Contrasts between the basin’s two municipalities, Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley, which regulate the use of private land within their boundaries, demonstrate the value of sustained contact between a protected area and its neighbors. Both towns abut the park boundary. However, since the park was established in the 1930s, Twentynine Palms has served as the park’s headquarters, and many of its employees have lived there and been involved in its civic life. As a result, Twentynine Palms has a sense of ownership of the park and its council tends to make land-use decisions that protect the desert landscape. Walls of buildings in its small business district are decorated with colorful murals depicting local human and natural history. On the other hand, faster-growing Yucca Valley identifies much less with the park and the desert and is following a path of conventional suburban development.

The Morongo Basin is expected to double its population between 2006 and 2025, from about 60,000 to 120,000. Park officials are working to consolidate other lands owned by the national government in the basin to create a buffer zone around the park, as well as a wildlife corridor between the park and a military reservation. The military are interested in creating a buffer around their own land so that development along their boundary does not interfere with training operations; thus, the park and the military have common interests. A local NGO, The Mojave Desert Land Trust, was set up in 2005 to acquire private land for conservation purposes, facilitate interagency cooperation, and work with local governments. In the privately owned parts of the basin that are still relatively undeveloped, one means of creating buffer zones and wildlife corridors would be to limit the building of houses to one per 40-acre (16 ha) parcel.

Joshua Tree National Park is an example of three other impacts of urbanization on protected areas:

·      Air pollution blown into the park from greater Los Angeles and the agricultural San Joaquin Valley deposits large quantities of nitrogen on the soil, fertilizing invasive European grasses that thrive on fire. Before the grasses became established, lighting-caused fires were confined by barren ground to small areas. Now, fires have become much more intense, spreading quickly through the grass over much larger areas and killing woody plants. In recent years, several such fires have occurred in and around the park, destroying stands of Joshua trees, pines, and junipers that will take decades or even centuries to recover (Wilson 2006). Although park officials keep air pollution control authorities informed of the nitrogen phenomenon, little staff time is available to do more.

·      In a desert climate that is naturally very dry, irrigation of gardens and golf courses in neighboring towns is humidifying the air in the park, changing insect life and bird migration and making it possible for new exotic plants to invade.

·      A solid waste landfill was proposed in the early 1990s less than a kilometer from the park’s boundary. If approved, it would be the largest landfill in the United States. Garbage from Los Angeles would be brought in by rail, 18,000 metric tons of it a day. The dump would pollute groundwater and the trains would add to air pollution. Opponents of the project, mainly local residents and conservation NGOs, have so far successfully challenged it in the courts.

Global warming is expected to have severe impacts on the California desert. Some of its plants will not survive an increase in summer heat, at least in their present ranges. Other plants need cold weather and will not survive warmer winters. Within 75 years, there may be few Joshua trees left in Joshua Tree National Park, although the species will survive elsewhere at higher elevations and more northerly latitudes. The park may participate in a pilot project to inform the public about the effects climate change will have on natural environments. By example, this project would also publicize energy alternatives: Joshua Tree National Park has more photovoltaic solar cells than all other units of the U.S. National Park System combined. The park has already conducted a one-day seminar on practical energy alternatives in cooperation with the local community college.

As in many U.S. national parks, another concern at Joshua Tree is light pollution from nearby towns, as well as “sky glow” from more distant cities. The National Park Service has a policy to “preserve, to the greatest extent possible, the natural lightscapes of parks, which are natural resources and values that exist in the absence of human-caused light . . . To prevent the loss of dark conditions and of natural light skies, the Service will seek the cooperation of park visitors, neighbors, and local government agencies to prevent or minimize the intrusion of artificial light into the night scene of the ecosystems of parks” (USNPS 2006). Artificial light not only detracts from visitors’ park experiences; it can also harm nocturnal wildlife (Harder 2006).     

The Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve includes Joshua Tree National Park, along with Mojave National Preserve and two other protected areas, but it is inactive, as are most biosphere reserves in the U.S.          

The desert: Protected areas in a coalescing megapolis

Some 100 km north of Joshua Tree National Park is Mojave National Preserve. (No IUCN Category has yet been assigned to this protected area. A “national preserve” is managed following all National Park Service standards, except that certain extractive activities are permitted, in this case hunting and some mining and cattle grazing.)  The preserve covers 6,201 sq km of desert mountains and valleys that range in altitude from 268 m to 2,417 m. Although it has few facilities, it attracts about 500,000 visitors a year.

The government of Clark County in the adjoining state of Nevada is buying land only 15 km from the Mojave National Preserve’s northern boundary for a second airport to serve the gambling and entertainment resort city of Las Vegas. The second airport is needed, the county’s planners say, because Las Vegas expects to double its hotel capacity by 2025 and the existing international airport will run out of capacity. Already, Las Vegas’ airport ranks tenth in the world in passenger traffic, 44 million, just after Frankfurt and Amsterdam (ACI 2006).

Although the National Park Service has been working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that planes from the new airport will not overfly the preserve, the noise will certainly disturb visitors, and research indicates it will cause migratory tropical birds to bypass the preserve or stop reproducing.

The airport site is also on or near proposed routes for a high-speed rail line that would connect Las Vegas with California desert towns and greater Los Angeles. Already, many people make the long drive between Los Angeles and the desert several times a week. A high-speed train will likely have an impact similar to those in Europe. In France, for example, workers with flexible schedules are able to live in villages and cities along the Mediterranean coast and commute to Paris two or three days a week.         

The large region that includes Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Tijuana and their environs is an example of a coalescing megapolis or megapolitan area. The word “megapolis” derives from “megalopolis,” which has had differing connotations.⁴ As Robert Lang and Dawn Dhavale (2005, 1-4) define them in U.S. terms, megapolitan areas are “integrated networks of metropolitan and micropolitan areas.” Among other things, their characteristics include combining at least two metropolitan areas, but perhaps dozens of them; linking large centers through major transportation infrastructure; and constituting “an organic cultural region with a distinct history and identity.”

Extending the concept over the globe, Richard Florida (2006, 64-65) identifies 20 “mega-regions” or “megas,” half in the U.S. and the rest scattered around the world. These include, for instance, “Euro-Lowlands,” which includes the Ruhr, Cologne,  Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, and Lille; and “Hong-Zen,” comprising Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. (He calls the Los Angeles-Las Vegas-Tijuana mega “So-Cal,” as do others.)  

The growing literature on megapolises focuses on their economic implications; rarely is there any mention of environmental quality, let alone conservation. Yet, where they exist or are coming into being, these complexes have serious implications for once relatively remote protected areas.

Sierra Nevada parks: Sequoia-Kings Canyon and Yosemite

Two gems of the U.S. National Park System, Sequoia-Kings Canyon and Yosemite, are in the Sierra Nevada, a 650-km-long mountain range that is California’s most prominent topographic feature; its southern end is some 250 km west of the Mojave Preserve.

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (IUCN Category II), administered as one unit, cover 3,500 sq km. They were created in 1890 and 1940, respectively. They protect groves of giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), a tree that grows to immense proportions — it is the world’s largest living thing — and can live as long as 3,200 years. The parks also preserve deep granite canyons and peaks rising to 4,400 m. They receive some 1.5 million visitors a year.

Unfortunately, Sequoia-Kings Canyon has the worst air pollution of any unit of the U.S. National Park System. This is chiefly because it is downwind of the San Francisco area, some 275 km to the northwest, as well as the farms, cities, and roads of the San Joaquin Valley, a vast agricultural area to the east. The mountains keep the pollution from escaping the valley and turn it into a swirl that concentrates near the parks, rising to 2,500 meters and higher. The main culprit is ozone, a serious hazard to human health. Many visitors complain of difficulty breathing, and park officials have had to curtail some guided tours because of poor air quality. The ozone also cuts down visibility — to less than 15 km on the worst summer days. Although the ancient trees seem unaffected, sequoia seedlings suffer from the pollution, as do pines.   

Although California has the strictest air pollution controls of any of the 50 U.S. states, certain pollutants are especially sensitive to population growth, especially ozone (UCD 1998). The National Park Service has an Air Resources Division that cooperates with air pollution control agencies in monitoring pollutant levels. Legislation gives national authorities some authority over major stationary sources of air pollution within 90 miles (145 km) of any national park; however, in this case the pollution originates in distant cities and numerous small sources in the valley and the law is of no use.

According to Annie Esperanza, who runs the parks’ air pollution program, the only way to cut this pollution is to build a constituency for clean air. The parks publicize health hazards on warning signs and in interpretive displays, brochures, and rangers’ campfire talks. “We have very little political clout,” Esperanza told a journalist. “We want people to know about it so anybody who can do something about it, will” (Polakovic 2005). 

University researchers monitoring air pollution at high elevations in the Sierra Nevada see increasing amounts of particulate matter, ozone, and other pollutants originating from China, almost halfway around the world. This is expected to increase (Chea 2006).

Yosemite National Park (IUCN Category II), farther to the north in the Sierra Nevada, was the first park created by the U.S. Government (in 1864, through a land grant to the California state government). It was designated a national park in 1890 and a World Heritage Site in 1984. Yosemite protects 3,080 sq km of lakes, meadows, sequoia groves, and granite peaks rising to 3,997 m. The park receives 3.5 million visitors a year, three quarters of whom arrive in private vehicles. Most visitors go only to 18-sq-km Yosemite Valley, which is surrounded by spectacular granite cliffs, pinnacles, and waterfalls.

Two forms of urbanization affect Yosemite National Park directly: growing gateway communities and overdevelopment within the park itself.

Like most national parks in the western U.S., Yosemite is buffered from private land by other publicly owned protected areas that keep gateway services such as lodging and restaurants at a distance. However, commercial complexes and residential development along several roads leading into the park have been growing and changing the rustic character of these corridors. In 2003, working with local business and government leaders, Park Superintendent Mike Tollefson helped start a dialogue on park-related issues called Yosemite Gateway Partners, which meets in the park quarterly. Growth of gateway communities throughout the U.S. National Park System has been receiving increasing attention by park managers as well as several NGOs, including the Conservation Fund (2006) and the Sonoran Institute (2006).  

Two other initiatives are helping to deal with development around protected areas throughout the Sierra Nevada: The Sierra Business Council (SBC 2006, Innes and Sandoval 2004) is an NGO founded in 1994 that enlists business leaders in securing the “social, natural, and financial health” of the region. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy is a unit of the California state government created in 2004 to work in partnership with public and private landowners and NGOs to help protect and restore the region, most of it managed by the national government; it covers over 100,000 sq km, a quarter of California. Although it has no regulatory powers and cannot buy land, the Conservancy can purchase easements from willing sellers, fund restoration projects, and give grants to NGOs and local governments for easements, land acquisitions, and other projects. It is one of nine conservancies within The Resources Agency of California that work in regions of special conservation concern (another, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, is described above).

Within Yosemite Valley, overdevelopment, as well as traffic, pollution, and noise from cars and buses, have been criticized for decades. In 1997, the issue was forced by a flood that took with it virtually all the roads, lodging, employee housing, and campsites on the valley floor. Successive Park Service plans to rebuild these facilities in ways that intended to have less impact on the valley’s natural assets have been met with controversy and are still in the courts. One group that opposes the current plan, Friends of Yosemite Valley (2006), asserts, among other things, that it would significantly increase paved areas and replace modest cabins with high-priced accommodations. John Reynolds (2005), a former senior official of the Park Service, describes the background and politics of this issue in an article in The Urban Imperative.     

Organized recreational users have been deeply involved in matters relating to the future of Yosemite National Park, as well as pressures of urbanization on many other protected areas in the U.S. (McMillan 2006).    

The new University of California campus at Merced has established the interdisciplinary Sierra Nevada Institute, which has educational and research partnerships with nearby Sequoia-Kings Canyon and Yosemite national parks. The institute set up its first field station in Yosemite in 2004 (UCM 2006).

Web sites

Binational

Biodiversity Research Center of the Californias:

   http://www.sdnhm.org/research

Border 2012 Tijuana Watershed Task Force: Use standard search engines to

  find relevant documents

Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias: http://irsc.sdsu.edu. Lists links

  to other border Web sites.

International Boundary and Water Commission / Comisión Internacional de

  Límites y Aguas. Mexican Section: http://www.sre.gob.mx/cila (Spanish). U.S.

  Section: http://www.ibwc.state.gov  

U.S.-Mexico Border Initiative (producing an online map of a 100-km band on

  both sides of the border that includes protected areas):

  http://international.usgs.gov

Mexico

Baja California state government: http://www.bajacalifornia.gob.mx

  (Spanish/English)

Pronatura: http://www.pronatura.org.mx (Spanish/English)

Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Secretariat of

  Environment and Natural Resources, Government of Mexico):

  http://www.semarnat.gob.mx (Spanish/English)

Terra Peninsular: http://www.terrapeninsular.org (Spanish/English)

USA

California Biodiversity Council: http://www.ceres.ca.gov/biodiv

Desert Protective Council: http://www.dpcinc.org

National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov (includes links to all parks)

The Nature Conservancy: http://www.nature.org

The Resources Agency of California: http://www.resources.ca.gov (includes

  links to California State Parks and the state conservancies)

Sierra Club California: http://www.sierraclub.org/ca

South Coast Wildlands: http://www.scwildlands.org

Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve:

  http://www.tijuanaestuary.com

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