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300 People, 50 Tribes, One Meeting: How California Built Its Marine Protected Areas · How To Protect The Ocean

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  In 1999, California passed a law ordering the state to fix its patchwork
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  of ocean parks. Nobody did anything with it for two years.
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  When they finally tried, the process took a decade,
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  cost more than $35 million, and at one point 300 people from
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  50 tribal nations walked into a public meeting to protest it.
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  Here's what actually happened between that law and the map you see today.
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  That's on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. I'm a marine biologist,
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  a science communicator, and the oceans communications manager for Pisces Oceans,
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  a consulting firm that works with ocean project leaders to make sure their projects
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  succeed to have a positive impact on the ocean.
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  Today we're going to be talking about the history of.
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  Of the California Networks of Marine Protected Area System.
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  Because yesterday you probably heard the I did with Anupa Ahsokan,
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  who talked about the adaptive management process that is ongoing right now,
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  that's not turning out to what it should have been.
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  And we talked a lot about that in yesterday's episode.
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  So check that out after this one.
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  But we're also gonna be talking about it later on in the week.
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  because this week is all about this California Marine Protected Area Network
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  as well as just marine protected areas in general.
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  So check that out.
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  So I think what's interesting is when we talk about a marine protected area
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  or network of marine protected area,
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  I think a lot of people just assume like ocean protection rules are there just like
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  it's purely a science decision or it's purely a political one and and it's
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  all just imposed on them. And sometimes that's the case.
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  Sometimes marine protected areas,
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  they're not done with good intentions or they're taken out with bad intentions.
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  And there are a lot of problems with the way marine protected areas are set up,
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  and there are some that are doing
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  Really great and have been, really focusing in on including everybody
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  and using science to make sure that the marine protected area is going
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  to be effective for future generations.
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  And that is a good way of doing things.
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  But the process is never perfect.
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  And we're gonna talk about this process to establish the California Network
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  of Marine Protected Areas because it's something that we need to talk about
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  so you understand what goes in.
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  To a process to designate a marine protected area or a network
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  of those protected areas, but also what could go wrong and what could
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  you adapt to in the future to make better?
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  And I think this is like a great ex this story,
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  it is a great example of that.
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  So in 1999, the Marine Life Protection Act sat unused for two years in California.
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  and after two failed implementation attempts to put it in in 2001 and 2002.
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  there was ~ a real worry about what's gonna happen.
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  Like it wasn't a dead law, it was still active,
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  it was just underfunded
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  Until in August 2004, the state entered a public-private partnership with
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  a nonprofit funder, the Resources Legacy Foundation,
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  it created the MLPA initiative to run the process region by region along the coast.
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  Now, what's interesting is this came before a federal
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  law that was established about marine spatial
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  Is when President Obama was in power and he had the national ocean policy
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  and its coastal marine spatial planning framework that put in didn't begin until
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  July 2010 via executive order.
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  Now at that point, the California's MLPA process was already deep into
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  its third and fourth regional phases,
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  and the Central Coast region had been designated back in 2007.
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  So this process was continuing after the 2004.
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  inclusion of resources legacy foundation.
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  And so we started to see all these,
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  you know, these and these networks start to get added to the protection area system,
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  which is really cool.
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  So in each of the four regions that were carved out of this process,
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  the actual design process worked like this:
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  an appointed regional stakeholder group made up of local fishermen,
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  conservationists, and other users drafted MPA proposals.
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  A science advisory team reviewed each proposal against ecological design principles.
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  So habitat representation, habitat replication,
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  MPA size, and spacing between protected areas,
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  plus a level of protection.
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  Rating scale for different allowed uses.
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  The Department of Fish and Game and the MLPA initiative staff are also weighed in.
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  So a policy-level Blue Ribbon Task Force reviewed the whole package
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  and forwarded a recommendation to the state's Fish and Game Commission,
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  the only body with legal authority to actually adopt the MPA.
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  All of this happened in thousands of hours of public meetings,
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  most of them recorded and archived over roughly a decade.
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  there was a huge conflict in this process.
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  And the root cause of that conflict was the process gave the public
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  a genuine seat at the table, but it did not accurately address tribal sovereignty
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  and traditional gathering rights from the start.
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  So on California's North Coast in particular,
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  there were a bunch of tribal meetings.
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  That argue that the MLPA framework only recognized commercial
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  and recreational fishing categories,
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  not traditional subsistence and cultural gathering.
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  So that tension came to a head in July 2011 when more than 300 people,
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  including members of 50 tribal nations,
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  took over a blue ribbon task force meeting in Fort Bragg,
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  Described by the participants at the time as the largest North Coast protest since
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  1990. The task force ultimately rejected language that would have terminated tribal
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  gathering rights, and the North Coast region's final unified proposal reached
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  by fishing, tribal, and environmental representatives together,
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  was adopted in 2012, with a formal tribal gathering exception.
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  But the problem was the tribal leaders themselves noted that they accepted
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  it with conditions rather than a full endorsement.
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  So this is the what happens in a lot of these processes because it was
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  so large and it it it looked at the entire state that it had groups in
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  it in these four regions, but obviously in this case it didn't include
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  the tribal groups, unfortunately get left out in a lot of these situations.
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  So there was a lot of pushback to what happened throughout this process,
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  eventually getting an agreement in place,
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  but it wasn't a full endorsement,
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  as I just mentioned.
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  Because a lot of the tribal leaders are like,
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  well, look, we took it with conditions,
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  but it's not perfect, but we'd like to improve on it.
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  And unfortunately, in a lot of these situations,
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  whether you're a fisher, whether you're a recreational diver,
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  or you're some sort of stakeholder or rights holder like the tribal communities,
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  a lot of the times not everybody's happy with the results.
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  And for good reason, they may not have been fully represented at the actual time
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  at the table and with a lot of the concerns that they've had.
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  But during that time,
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  There are times where you have all of this moving forward through adaptive
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  management. as the Marine Protected Area Network is put in place,
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  as it improved throughout this process,
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  and that they had a formal setup for these networks of marine protected areas,
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  which is, I think it was 124 protected areas within the network.
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  Then there comes time of actually putting it in place.
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  monitoring it, evaluating it, and then redesigning it based
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  on recommendations from the science and the public input.
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  And that's where we're kind of left at this point.
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  There was another 10 years of waiting,
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  and recently an adaptive management process kicked off,
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  which is what we talked to ANUPA about,
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  which hasn't really gone in a great way.
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  And we talked a little bit about that because they didn't talk about
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  the science in this and they only had petitions from the public.
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  But we're gonna talk about it later on this week in episodes where we're gonna say,
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  hey, this is really important to talk about when you include the science,
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  because it gives people the the official assessment of how these marine protected
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  area networks are doing. And this is a big part of managing a marine protected area
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  network. Because if you don't manage it,
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  if you don't reassess it and reassess it and reassess and change
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  and revise and adapt, then there's really no point in putting these protected areas
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  in place. It takes money.
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  It takes time, it takes effort,
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  and it takes the will of the people to have the patience and
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  the understanding to meet together and and work on how they can improve
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  the system for everyone, not just one party.
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  So that's the episode for today.
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  I want to kind of give you that explanation of what happened during the setup
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  of the California Marine Protected Area System.
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  Obviously, based on yesterday's episode with ANUPA,
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  Things haven't really changed in the way.
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  where people are being heard for their concerns.
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  And it's actually getting more aggressive in the way that it's doing
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  it because some groups are speaking over others and could be intimidating others
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  in that process. So obviously there's a long way to go in this process.
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  The government needs to step up to make sure that everybody has their
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  say and feels safe to have their say.
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  But this was an episode about the history of the network of marine protected areas.
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  We're gonna get into it all the rest of this week with different shows.
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  That we have coming up. Tomorrow's episode is going to be on
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  the actual adaptive management and ~ California's Ocean Safety Net actually working.
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  We're gonna really talk about the evaluation and that assessment.
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  don't forget to tune in tomorrow.
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  Hit that follow button so you make sure you follow this podcast
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  and don't miss tomorrow's episode.
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  I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.