SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – California’s 30×30 goal was a topic at the Sierra Nevada Alliance Conservation Conference held at Lake Tahoe Community College, Nov. 7-8. In 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom committed the state to conserving 30% of lands and coastal waters by 2030, and the key to meeting the ambitious goal could be right here in the Sierra Nevada.

“One thing that’s very unique about the Sierra Nevada region is there’s more public lands here than any other region in the state, as I’m sure you all are familiar with,” Madeline Drake with the California Natural Resources Agency said to the full house at the Duke Theater that Friday morning.

The assistant secretary for biodiversity and habitat was this year’s keynote speaker and provided an update on the 30×30 initiative. California was one of the first to commit to the goal with the initiative in 2020. In January of 2021, the Biden administration issued an executive order on tackling the climate crisis and committed the United States to 30×30 through its America the Beautiful initiative. The year following, many countries came together for a United Nations in 2022 to agree to a 30×30 goal.

---

---

California’s Pathways to 30×30 strategy lays out three key objectives: protect and restore biodiversity, expand access to nature, and mitigate and build resilience to climate change. All while striving for those objectives, the state committed to advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as strengthening tribal partnerships, and protecting economic prosperity, clean energy resources, and food supply.

Drake shared California has now conserved 25.2% of lands and 16.2% of coastal waters. “We’re really proud that when we released our strategy back in 2022, we were only at 23.8%, and so in just two years, we’ve added 1.5 million acres, which is an incredible pace.”

---

---

That still leaves 4.8 million acres with just five years to go. “So we can’t let up on the gas,” she said, “We have to go further, faster.”

One of the pathways to achieving that as outlined in the goal’s strategy is to enhance conservation of already existing public lands and coastal waters. Drake said that while 33% of the Sierra Nevada already counts toward the goal, there’s still a lot key opportunity here. In fact, 11 million acres worth of opportunity.

“That’s way more than that 4.8 [million] we need to reach the goal,” she said, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Not just any land can qualify for the 30×30 initiative.

“The definition that we landed on for what is a 30×30 conservation area,” Drake said, “is land and coastal water areas that are durably protected and managed to sustain functional ecosystems, both intact and restored, and the diversity of life that they support.”

Those 11 million acres in the Sierra Nevada don’t quite have the level of biodiversity management that counts towards that definition, Drake explained.

Lis Olaerts with the Sierra Nevada Alliance further elaborated on this with the Tribune and explained that much of those lands are BLM or Forest Service lands that have other priority uses like logging and mining to manage. Right now, biodiversity and protection or access to recreation is not a priority.

“We are taking steps related to that,” Olaerts said. One of those is working with the Forest Service and BLM to shift priorities and allocate areas for biodiversity.

Olaerts explains this year brought a win in that effort when a BLM public lands rule passed increasing biodiversity on the list of priorities. “It put biodiversity for the first time, on the same level as these other priorities, as other economic priorities.”

“And that is positive,” Olaerts said.

The Pathways to 30×30 strategy incorporates a total of ten pathways to reach the goal.

Another one of those pathways that are applicable to the Sierra Nevada, Drake explained, is expanding and accelerating environmental restoration and stewardship. “Some of these places have to be restored, as I’m sure you all know, to really meet those biodiversity and conservation goals,” she stated to the crowd, “And we have some amazing success stories and models that we can look at.”

She highlighted the Upper Truckee Marsh Restoration near the Tahoe Keys, here in the Tahoe Basin, as one success story. The California Tahoe Conservancy led project restored 250 acres worth of floodplain there.

The passing of California Proposition 4 (Climate bond) Drake said, will continue to help the state perform these types of projects and push the initiative forward to reach the 30×30 goal.

To review all the strategy pathways and annual progress reports on the 30×30 plan, visit californianature.ca.gov.