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

FRAYED SAFETY

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to engage in monitoring at a number of levels.
In this monitoring plan, there is habitat moni-
toring (of acreage of natural habitat, changes in
habitat through disturbance like fire and flood
and changes in habitat quality over time), moni-
toring of wildlife corridor usage and monitoring
of certain target species. Most of the techniques
are quantitative, and permanent transects or
monitoring plots are established at particular
sampling sites.
Because there is not enough money to moni-
tor all areas and covered species adequately, mon-
itoring is oriented toward detecting dramatic
population changes in certain target species and
expected changes in habitat quality (especially
edge effects). A maximum of 29 permanent habi-
tat monitoring plots ranging from 50 to 200
acres in size will be established for the planned
172,000-acre preserve. This sparse sampling
reflects the inadequate budget for biological
monitoring. Fortunately, this biological moni-
toring program is just one of many aspects of the
MSCP that will be part of tracking biological
resources in the planning area, in addition to
biological surveys of new parcels in the preserve
system and research programs of independent
scientists and agency biologists. This monitoring
system is one of the most comprehensive for any
conservation plan.

Negative Examples

One of the worst aspects of biological moni-
toring for HCPs is the absence of a government
program to monitor the effects of all of the small
HCPs being approved. Small HCPs typically do
not have biological monitoring because of the

"negligible" effects on species and the short time
frame of the incidental take permit.
Nevertheless, according to the services' database,
most HCPs are small, and multiple small and
large HCPs have been approved for certain
species such as the golden-cheeked warbler and
the northern spotted owl. Without a program
for monitoring the potentially large effects of
multiple small HCPs, the services have publicly
promoted HCPs without keeping up with them.
In addition, they have made it impossible to
understand the cumulative effects of the

approved HCPs.

National Trends

Biological monitoring programs for conserva-
tion plans obviously can vary between intensive
daily tracking and total absence of monitoring.
Most of the plans we reviewed have insufficient
monitoring. In some cases, there is monitoring
of endangered species populations but very little
or no habitat or vegetation monitoring. For
example, in the San Bruno Mountain HCP there
is an annual assessment of an index of the popu-
lation size of several endangered butterfly species.
Each year the environmental consulting compa-
ny walks transects and counts butterflies along
those transects. This measure of a portion of the
population is meant to represent the status of the
population relative to previous years, but the
location of the transects changes from year to
year, which makes year-to-year comparisons
dubious. Whether or not this method accurately
assesses the overall butterfly population, the
monitoring is insufficient because there has been
no habitat monitoring to track changes in native

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