BENEFITS AND JUSTIFICATION OF WILDLIFE REFUGES

Wildlife refuges provide many positive benefits to local communities and their environments.  Wildlife and wildlands are resources with innate values for use in scientific research, education, and public enjoyment, and refuges protect and enhance these resources.

Ira N. Gabrielson, former director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, listed four purposes of a wildlife refuge (1943).

• To act as a production and dispersion center where the overflow restocks hunted or depleted areas.
  
• To protect wildlife and its habitat.
  
• To help control flood and erosion by managing the vegetation and improving stream quality.
  
• To reduce fire hazard by thinning the secondary growth for habitat management.

John Muir (1838-1914), Gifford Pinchot (1865-1914), and Aldo Leopold (1886-1948) have provided us with their philosophies on the value and goals of conservation.  Ultimately, the goal of conservation should be to support high biodiversity by limiting the extinction of populations and species, increasing ecological complexity, and promoting evolutionary processes. Because the ecological world is dynamic and human presence is a part of the ecological world, conservation actions must reflect and include these two aspects.  The continued population increase in California and the Central Coast accelerates the problems of decreasing wildlife and open lands.  People moving to the area in search of a better life are themselves affecting the environmental conditions that make life "good" in California’s Central Coast.  Consequently, land that is managed properly now, will become even more valuable to the community and its natural resources in the future.  As population growth continues, agriculturalists and conservationists will increasingly find themselves in the same camp, protecting certain lands from further development.

An opportunity exists for Cal Poly to serve as a diplomacy center where agriculture and wildlife interests meet and develop mutually beneficial land use strategies.  The educational benefits of managing Cal Poly as a wildlife refuge range from application of its "learn by doing" philosophy to making its land use practices an example for all other state institutions.  Cal Poly will become a place where farming, ranching, forestry, biology and conservation all take place and complement each other.

As a state institution, Cal Poly should meet the requirements dictated by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) (Bass and Herson 1994).  Management of its lands as a wildlife refuge would meet and perhaps even exceed several legislative declarations of CEQA including:

• Develop and maintain a high-quality environment now and in the future, and take all actions necessary to protect, rehabilitate and enhance the environmental quality of the state.
  
• Preserve for future generations representations of all plant and animal communities and examples of the major periods of California history.
  
• Create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony to fulfill the social and economic requirements of present and future generations.
  
• Require governmental agencies at all levels to develop standards and procedures necessary to protect environmental quality.
  
• Require governmental agencies at all levels to consider qualitative factors as well as economic and technical factors and long-term benefits and costs, in addition to short-term benefits and costs and to consider alternatives to proposed actions affecting the environment.

Many of the activities taking place on Cal Poly land are compatible with wildlife species.  Even the core campus is amicable to certain wildlife, although the wildlife value of all portions certainly can be improved.  The meshing of agricultural and wildlife interests often can be improved to the benefit of both sides.  For example, grazing can be compatible with, if not beneficial to, a wildlife refuge.  Much of the 900 acres of undeveloped land considered to be unsuitable for agriculture is prime habitat for wildlife.  For example, the northern section of Serrano Ranch is a key wildlife area for black bear habitat (The Resources Agency 1979).  The watersheds for Chorro and Pennington Creeks both cross portions of the Chorro Creek, Walters and Escuela Ranches.  Overall, wildlife diversity and species richness is highest along riparian corridors.

The opportunity to manage lands for the enhancement of  wildlife is rare for a university because most universities do not have a combination of land area, wildlife species and agricultural activities to warrant extensive biodiversity management efforts.  Cal Poly is aptly suited for this challenging opportunity because of its location and the diversity of habitat types within its boundaries.  The 6,000 acres of Cal Poly properties support grasslands, coast live oak woodlands, chaparral, coastal scrub, wetlands, riparian corridors, and serpentine outcrops.  These habitats can be managed for the benefit of wildlife and at the same time provide additional educational experiences to the students of Cal Poly.