Cotoni-Coast Dairies
BLM Publishes Plan for Public Access to Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument
Cotoni-Coast Dairies was given to the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2014. In January 2017, in his final days in office, President Barack Obama proclaimed it a unit of the California Coastal National Monument. To guide the management and development of public access to Cotoni-Coast Dairies, the BLM must develop a Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA) of the California Coastal National Monument Management Plan. That process is guided by the National Environmental Policy Act, (NEPA) which is similar to the process required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The NEPA process was unfamiliar to local residents as this was the first time it has been applied in Santa Cruz County. (Cotoni-Coast Dairies is the only property in the county owned by the BLM.)
While waiting for the process to begin, FONC watched as the BLM created an interim management plan and opened a poorly designed trail that was only used for a handful of guided walks. Funding for the planning process was slow to come, and the BLM Field Office planning staff, based in Marina, was preoccupied with amendments to fracking rules for its other holdings, most of which are in Monterey and San Benito counties. These amendments triggered a lawsuit, further slowing the process.
Meanwhile, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, which represents local Ohlone peoples, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the BLM and had time to survey and identify cultural resource areas in Cotoni-Coast Dairies needing protection.
The Proclamation by President Obama caused concern over the many impacts of increased visitation national monument status will bring. Monument designation made Cotoni-Coast Dairies part of the special federal properties identified as National Conservation Lands. This changed the orientation of the BLM’s usual multi-use planning format and pivoted it to protection of natural and cultural resources as the highest priority, as it is for all National Conservation Lands.
Funding arrived along with new guidelines from the Interior Department, of which the BLM is a part, and in 2019 the BLM began the NEPA process, intending to implement a new directive emphasizing expanded public access. The BLM moved ahead with the planning process with presentations at a pair of public meetings in August 2019, giving interested parties a chance to submit comments on items and issues they thought the BLM should consider. That process, called “scoping,” gave the public, local governments and agencies an opportunity to bring issues and potential impacts to the attention of the BLM planners. After weighing the comments, the BLM published a Draft Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA) and Environmental Assessment. They presented it at two public meetings in March 2020, and opened a public comment period, now over.
Presumably under the direction of the Trump appointees at the Department of the Interior, the draft RMPA is deeply flawed and inadequate. It is shockingly lacking in the studies and baseline determinations needed to identify and quantify impacts of public access both on the environment and surrounding communities.
Instead it offers only vague and non-specific protections that depend on uncertain future funding and staffing from the Trump administration, which has dispersed the BLM administrative structure and moved its headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. The acting head of BLM is an advocate of shale oil fracking on public lands and believes all federal land should be sold. BLM headquarters is now in an office building shared by Chevron, Laramie Energy and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, who were formerly represented by Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt.
Deed restrictions, accepted by the BLM when it acquired Cotoni-Coast Dairies from the Trust for Public Land (for no charge), disallow energy exploration on the property. Faced with the prospect that the BLM would open up Cotoni-Coast Dairies with inadequate protection against over-visitation, and promote uses such as hunting, FONC realized that legal action might be needed in the future to prevent destruction of conservation-oriented values that FONC has fought so long to protect. FONC organized as an incorporated non-profit and retained legal counsel to provide comments and alternatives during the RMPA comment period, given that the Environmental Assessment inexplicably recommends a “Finding of No Significant Impact” from the potential use of up to 250,000 visitors annually, a number the BLM cited in the RMPA.
While waiting for the process to begin, FONC watched as the BLM created an interim management plan and opened a poorly designed trail that was only used for a handful of guided walks. Funding for the planning process was slow to come, and the BLM Field Office planning staff, based in Marina, was preoccupied with amendments to fracking rules for its other holdings, most of which are in Monterey and San Benito counties. These amendments triggered a lawsuit, further slowing the process.
Meanwhile, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, which represents local Ohlone peoples, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the BLM and had time to survey and identify cultural resource areas in Cotoni-Coast Dairies needing protection.
The Proclamation by President Obama caused concern over the many impacts of increased visitation national monument status will bring. Monument designation made Cotoni-Coast Dairies part of the special federal properties identified as National Conservation Lands. This changed the orientation of the BLM’s usual multi-use planning format and pivoted it to protection of natural and cultural resources as the highest priority, as it is for all National Conservation Lands.
Funding arrived along with new guidelines from the Interior Department, of which the BLM is a part, and in 2019 the BLM began the NEPA process, intending to implement a new directive emphasizing expanded public access. The BLM moved ahead with the planning process with presentations at a pair of public meetings in August 2019, giving interested parties a chance to submit comments on items and issues they thought the BLM should consider. That process, called “scoping,” gave the public, local governments and agencies an opportunity to bring issues and potential impacts to the attention of the BLM planners. After weighing the comments, the BLM published a Draft Resource Management Plan Amendment (RMPA) and Environmental Assessment. They presented it at two public meetings in March 2020, and opened a public comment period, now over.
Presumably under the direction of the Trump appointees at the Department of the Interior, the draft RMPA is deeply flawed and inadequate. It is shockingly lacking in the studies and baseline determinations needed to identify and quantify impacts of public access both on the environment and surrounding communities.
Instead it offers only vague and non-specific protections that depend on uncertain future funding and staffing from the Trump administration, which has dispersed the BLM administrative structure and moved its headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. The acting head of BLM is an advocate of shale oil fracking on public lands and believes all federal land should be sold. BLM headquarters is now in an office building shared by Chevron, Laramie Energy and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, who were formerly represented by Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt.
Deed restrictions, accepted by the BLM when it acquired Cotoni-Coast Dairies from the Trust for Public Land (for no charge), disallow energy exploration on the property. Faced with the prospect that the BLM would open up Cotoni-Coast Dairies with inadequate protection against over-visitation, and promote uses such as hunting, FONC realized that legal action might be needed in the future to prevent destruction of conservation-oriented values that FONC has fought so long to protect. FONC organized as an incorporated non-profit and retained legal counsel to provide comments and alternatives during the RMPA comment period, given that the Environmental Assessment inexplicably recommends a “Finding of No Significant Impact” from the potential use of up to 250,000 visitors annually, a number the BLM cited in the RMPA.
Read comments on the Cotoni-Coast Dairies California Coastal National Monument Draft Resource Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Assessment HERE.
Read the letter from FONC’s attorney regarding the BLM’s Resource Management Plan HERE.
Read the letter from FONC’s attorney regarding the BLM’s Resource Management Plan HERE.
How We Think Cotoni-Coast Dairies NM Should Be Opened for Public Access
In February 2020 the Bureau of Land Management Central Coast Field Office, which administers almost 300,000 acres of public land in Central California, published what it calls a Resource Management Plan (RMP) to open Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument to the public. The 5,800 acre property north of Santa Cruz, California, was originally spared from development by the Save the Redwoods League in 1998, and deeded to the BLM in 2014.
The BLM’s RMP is unusual, and inadequate, in that it presented three alternative sets of public uses, including hiking, biking, horseback riding, dog walking, hunting, scientific study and education, for which it intends to study the environmental impacts, but didn’t identify what is usually called a “Preferred Alternative”. That Preferred Alternative tells the interested public (agencies, private organizations like the Friends of the North Coast, and individuals) what actual plan is intended, pending the outcome of environmental impact studies. Instead, the BLM said it would choose items, like activities, access points, trails and facilities, from among the three alternatives.
FONC, after consultation with naturalists in different fields and local organizations, like the Rural Bonny Doon Association and the Davenport/North Coast Association, is proposing to the BLM its own Preferred Alternative, presented here. We believe that our plan takes into account preservation of the animals and plants communities (several unique to the area that reside on Cotoni-Coast Dairies), public safety, and limits impacts on neighboring communities.
Read the details of FONC’s Preferred Alternative for Cotoni-Coast Dairies to the public HERE.
The BLM’s RMP is unusual, and inadequate, in that it presented three alternative sets of public uses, including hiking, biking, horseback riding, dog walking, hunting, scientific study and education, for which it intends to study the environmental impacts, but didn’t identify what is usually called a “Preferred Alternative”. That Preferred Alternative tells the interested public (agencies, private organizations like the Friends of the North Coast, and individuals) what actual plan is intended, pending the outcome of environmental impact studies. Instead, the BLM said it would choose items, like activities, access points, trails and facilities, from among the three alternatives.
FONC, after consultation with naturalists in different fields and local organizations, like the Rural Bonny Doon Association and the Davenport/North Coast Association, is proposing to the BLM its own Preferred Alternative, presented here. We believe that our plan takes into account preservation of the animals and plants communities (several unique to the area that reside on Cotoni-Coast Dairies), public safety, and limits impacts on neighboring communities.
Read the details of FONC’s Preferred Alternative for Cotoni-Coast Dairies to the public HERE.