California Native Plant Society warns of Jepson Prairie encroachment

The California Native Plant Society hosted an informational hike at Jepson Prairie for social media influencers and members of the media to photograph the area's flora and fauna and discuss how California Forever's East Solano Plan could potentially encroach on the critical habitat.

California Native Plant Society ecologist Carol Witham welcomed attendees to the event and offered expertise about vernal pools across the state. Jane Hicks, a Jepson Prairie Docent, provided a land acknowledgement to the Patwin people. She said the prairie spans 1,600 acres and extends all the way to Highway 113 on its eastern border. About 10 percent of the original vernal pool and native grassland habitat remains intact in the State of California.

Vernal pools could be as shallow as a thin puddle on the roadside, docents said, and rainfall totals this springtime led to higher grass growth. Some vernal pools, however, span the size of football fields in April and will be dried up by June. Plants and animals in shallow ponds are very different from those that grow in larger ones. Fish generally do not live in the ponds unless spawning in the pools, nor do bullfrogs, making the pools ideal for small amphibian and crustacean species.

Docents have federal permits to take organisms from the water, and did so in clear plastic containers to show them to attendees up close. They handed around vernal pool tadpole shrimp, which they called the Roombas of the vernal pool, scraping the bottom to eat debris from other organisms. The organisms are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs, but cannot fertilize themselves.

Docents also showed two California Tiger Salamanders, which live in gopher burrows during the summertime to stay protected, some as far as a mile or a mile and a half away from their vernal pools. They generally only migrate at night under the cover of rain.

"It's why it's so important to have large landscapes that are preserved," Witham said.

Witham said that artificial burrow pools are often constructed, but she finds that natural ones provide higher function and value.

"I hate that we destroy natural ones and build artificial ones," she said.

Witham said chipping away at the edges of vernal pool habitats makes it harder to maintain what remains. Jepson Prairie is less than 1 percent of the 10 percent left in the state, but the surrounding region is significant in its uniqueness. Most Californian vernal pools remain on the east side of the Sacramento Valley, but they tend to be on cattle ranches with very different soil types and very different species, she said.

"It's going to substantially reduce the area of habitat because it's not just California Forever," she said. "They're going to have to realign Highway 113."

Nate Huntington of Solano Together said the Solano Foundry and portions of residential mixed-use would be placed on top of vernal pool habitats as part of the East Solano Plan. Road realignment would be chosen by Caltrans rather than California Forever,

"I refuse to look deep into their specific plan until they actually come out with an EIR," Witham said. "And then I'll tear it apart."

California Forever owns a considerable amount of land with conservation easements, which Solano Land Trust worries will be broken, according to Huntington. In its third chapter on land use and development standards, the Suisun Expansion Specific Plan notes that certain areas in the proposed site are covered by conservation easements, which, Witham said, they may intend to use for agrovoltaics that are incompatible with vernal pools.

"Compliance with the conservation easements is required as long as the easements are in effect," the plan reads. "These conservation easement areas will be zoned for open space uses."

The plan says the new community would be "strategically situated outside of and protect open space conservation lands, including Jepson Prairie." The plan also promises to preserve grassland bird areas and provide greenways for wildlife to move through the region.

"One species of particular concern is the California Tiger Salamander, which conducts mass migrations from upland burrows to freshwater breeding habitats," the plan reads. "To reduce risk to wildlife species during migration, micropassages and barriers will be installed to help direct wildlife movement."

Witham said the issue is locally important now, but will gain notoriety with environmental groups across the state.

"There will be. I promise you. I do wish there were more statewide attention. I think it's a little early," she said.

Huntington said the 7,000 acre maritime facility near Collinsville could have considerable environmental impacts that are not yet clear. He described the project as a "land flip" aimed at rezoning the land for the purpose of profit, and said investor Michael Moritz has said the company could make ten times its investment through rezoning alone.

"We don't even have a specific plan," he said of the shipyard proposal. "They haven't submitted anything to the county about what it would be."

If California Forever is able to move forward with the East Solano Plan, Witham said the California Native Plant Society would rush to protect as much of Jepson Prairie under environmental easements as possible.

"I also think that there is enough resistance to this project that we'll probably take it to the court of law," she said. "I am not saying that CNPS specifically will, but there is enough environmental groups that really, truly think this is the wrong place for a new city, that we will tie it up for as long as we possibly can in order to get the most conservation out of what they propose as possible, if that means shinking their size, if that means giving up a lot of the vernal pool landscape that they have already bought. There is just a whole laundry list of things we could go after."

Witham wished the company had invested their money in development within city centers, and worried about encroachment on Travis Air Force Base.

"They follow some pretty strange billionaire thought patterns related to sovereign cities and things like that, that I am really afraid of," she said. "And the descriptions that I have heard about California Forever remind me of the corporate towns that used to exist in the United States post-depression."

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