Habitat protection: endangered species.

(1) Existing law authorizes the Department of Fish and Wildlife to enter into contracts or other agreements with nonprofit conservation groups, as specified, for the management and operation of department-managed lands, defined to include public shooting grounds, state marine recreational management areas, ecological reserves, and wildlife management areas. Existing law states that it is the policy of the state to maintain sufficient populations of all species of wildlife and native plants and the habitat necessary to insure their continued existence at the optimum levels possible to insure, among other things, the policy to perpetuate native plants and all species of wildlife for their intrinsic and ecological values, as well as for their direct benefits to humanity. The California Constitution establishes the Fish and Game Commission and provides for the delegation to the commission of powers relating to the protection and propagation of fish and game, including the conservation and enhancement of bird habitat. This bill would authorize the department to lease department-managed lands for agricultural activities, as specified. The bill would authorize, upon appropriation by the Legislature, the moneys collected from those agricultural leases to be used to support the management, maintenance, restoration, and operations of department-managed lands. The bill would require the department to annually provide an opportunity for licensed hunters to comment and make recommendations on the public hunting programs, including anticipated habitat conditions in the hunting areas on Type A and Type B Wildlife Areas, as defined under the commission's regulations, through public meetings or other public outreach. In complying with these provisions, the bill would authorize the department to hold regional meetings on its hunting programs for several different wildlife areas. (2) The California Endangered Species Act requires the Fish and Game Commission to establish a list of endangered species and a list of threatened species, and requires the department to recommend, and the commission to adopt, criteria for determining if a species is endangered or threatened. Under the act, an interested person may petition the commission to add a species to, or remove a species from, either the list of endangered species or the list of threatened species, and existing law requires the commission to consider the petition at a meeting, as prescribed. This bill, until January 1, 2017, would establish an alternate process for the review of a petition, including public hearings and public comment. (3) The California Endangered Species Act also provides, until January 1, 2014, that the accidental take of candidate, threatened, or endangered species resulting from acts that occur on a farm or a ranch in the course of otherwise lawful routine and ongoing agricultural activities is not prohibited by the act. This bill would make a technical change to these provisions and extend this exception to January 1, 2020. The bill would define "accidental" for these purposes. (4) The California Endangered Species Act, until January 1, 2014, provides for the development and implementation of a recovery strategy pilot program for coho salmon. This bill would extend these provisions to January 1, 2017. (5) Existing law regulates water transfers and, among other things, allows a permittee or licensee to temporarily change the point of diversion, place of use, or purpose of use due to a transfer or exchange of water or water rights if the transfer would only involve the amount of water that would have been consumptively used or stored by the permittee or licensee in the absence of the proposed temporary change, would not injure any legal user of the water, and would not unreasonably affect fish, wildlife, or other instream beneficial uses. This bill would, when agricultural lands are being idled in order to provide water for transfer and an amount of water is determined to be made available by that idling, require landowners to be encouraged to cultivate or retain nonirrigated cover crops or natural vegetation to provide waterfowl, upland game bird, and other wildlife habitat, as specified. (6) Existing law requires the Department of Water Resources to prepare a water transfer guide which is required to include specified information. This bill would revise the contents of the water transfer guide to include fish and wildlife issues related to the transfer of water in preparing or revising the water transfer guide.