8011

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 8011
• Author: Hood, L. C., et al.
• Title: Frayed Safety Nets, Conservation Planning Under the Endangered Species Act 1998.
• USFW Year: 1998.
• USFW - Doc Type: Washington D.C.
• Copyright Material: YES

................................................................................................................................................... F RAY E 0 SA F E T Y NET S

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managed so that each subunit will have less than
33 percent with more than one mile per square
mile. In addition, "the long-term goal is to vol-
untarily reach no more than 21 percent of any
subunit exceeding one mile of open road per
square mile" (p. 3, italics added). Moreover, here
we have been referring to open roads. This
agreement sets up no requirements on closed
road densities, nor does it establish a plan to
reclaim closed roads, which can be open for
"administrative use." Therefore, the guidelines
for road densities are actually less protective in
Swan Valley than in the rest of the Flathead
National Forest and far less protective than rec-
ommended by biologists.
Because the San Bruno Mountain HCP has
been implemented for 15 years, it is much easier
to identify management difficulties than for
plans that have been recently approved.
Although managers have encountered numerous
difficulties in plan implementation thus far, habi-
tat management for San Bruno has not been a
failure, and there are lessons for the implementa-
tion of subsequent conservation plans.
The success of the San Bruno Mountain
HCP in sustaining endangered butterflies ulti-
mately rests on the effectiveness of management
activities that are necessary for maintaining grass-
land habitat. Indeed, the major advantage of
establishing this HCP was the creation of a fund-
ing source and program for actively managing
the grassland habitat which is threatened by nat-
ural succession to brushland as well as invasion
by exotic species such as gorse, broom, eucalyp-
tuS and fennel. In general, the plan has failed to
reduce the extent of exotic species and restore

areas to native grassland suitable for butterflies.
A strategy designed to reverse the spread of
exotics into native grassland, however, has been
effective, and some people argue that many acres
of grassland would have been lost this way with-
out the HCP. Nevertheless, the goals of the orig-
inal H CP were to reclaim disturbed areas to
grassland and res~ore some areas degraded by
exotic species to native grassland.
Difficulty in fulfilling habitat management
goals has occurred because at the beginning of
the plan there was little understanding about
exotic removal techniques and restoration ecolo-
gy, and therefore there was no specific manage-
ment strategy that was approved along with the
H CP. Removal of exotics has been harder and
more costly than originally anticipated, and some
attempts at restoring grassland have failed. For
example, probably the most controversial aspect
of this plan has been habitat management. In
1995, Planned Sierra Resources offeted to
clearcut 63 acres of eucalyptus in the planning
area for free, and the county accepted the offer.
Unfortunately, erosion resulted from the removal
of vegetation, the eucalyptus has resprouted
(although volunteers have helped to control
resprouts). Reclamation of the clearcut area is
expected to take more than ten years.
Mter ten years of plan implementation,
Thomas Reid Associates developed an exotic
species management plan for gorse, broom, fen-
nel and eucalyptus in the planning area. These
plans summarized the extent of invasion, tech-
niques to remove those invasive species, what
had been done in the first ten years of the plan
to control them and priorities for future action.