Editorial: Even government dislikes its rules
Chico Enterprise Record - 11/24/02

It would be funny if it wasn't so hypocritical. While the government is demanding that landowners go to great measures to protect endangered species, the government doesn't want any endangered species on its land. That would leave the government susceptible to its own stringent regulations.

The delicious irony was unearthed in an Enterprise-Record story Monday by reporter Heather Hacking. The government has been buying up land along the Sacramento River. The land grab is an effort to protect the Sacramento River's riparian corridor, in part to provide habitat for rare plant and animal species.

People who build homes, bridges and roads could put the land to use. Whenever a building project has an elderberry bush in the way, it's a bureaucratic nightmare. Elderberry bushes are common in these parts and not in danger of getting on the endangered species list. But bushes can't be removed without a lot of red tape because they may become habitat for a threatened species, the valley elderberry longhorn beetle.

So, say a developer is building 50 homes on 10 vacant acres of land in the middle of Chico that has one elderberry bush. The developer then has to either move that plant to a permanently protected location or must plant several elderberry bushes elsewhere to mitigate the killing of the one bush, even if there are no signs of beetles.

That permanently protected land is known as a mitigation bank. The government-owned land along the river is a natural place for a mitigation bank.

But the state Reclamation Board doesn't want elderberries on state land. The Reclamation Board is charged with protecting land from flooding. If elderberry bushes are present along the river, the Reclamation Board is afraid it will be barred from doing emergency work along the river during a flood.

This doesn't make sense to anyone except maybe bureaucrats with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Reclamation Board and the state Department of Fish and Game. The three agencies are working on a deal that would allow elderberry bushes to be planted in abundance on state land, yet still allow the Reclamation Board to do its work in an emergency. Any sane person would think that's a logical compromise.

If the agencies can't get this straightened out, we implore our new legislator in Sacramento, Rick Keene, to make it a priority once he gets to the Capitol.

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