300 People, 50 Tribes, One Meeting: How California Built Its Marine Protected Areas

0:00 In 1999, California passed a law ordering the state to fix its patchwork of ocean parks. Nobody did anything with it for two years. When they finally tried, the process took a decade, cost more than $35 million, and at one point 300 people from 50 tribal nations walked into a public meeting to protest it. Here's what actually happened between that law and the map you see today. That's on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. I'm a marine biologist, a science communicator, and the oceans communications manager for Pisces Oceans, a consulting firm that works with ocean project leaders to make sure their projects succeed to have a positive impact on the ocean.

0:45 Today we're going to be talking about the history of. Of the California Networks of Marine Protected Area System. Because yesterday you probably heard the I did with Anupa Ahsokan, who talked about the adaptive management process that is ongoing right now, that's not turning out to what it should have been. And we talked a lot about that in yesterday's episode. So check that out after this one. But we're also gonna be talking about it later on in the week. because this week is all about this California Marine Protected Area Network as well as just marine protected areas in general. So check that out. So I think what's interesting is when we talk about a marine protected area or network of marine protected area, I think a lot of people just assume like ocean protection rules are there just like it's purely a science decision or it's purely a political one and and it's all just imposed on them. And sometimes that's the case.

1:37 Sometimes marine protected areas, they're not done with good intentions or they're taken out with bad intentions. And there are a lot of problems with the way marine protected areas are set up, and there are some that are doing Really great and have been, really focusing in on including everybody and using science to make sure that the marine protected area is going to be effective for future generations. And that is a good way of doing things. But the process is never perfect. And we're gonna talk about this process to establish the California Network of Marine Protected Areas because it's something that we need to talk about so you understand what goes in. To a process to designate a marine protected area or a network of those protected areas, but also what could go wrong and what could you adapt to in the future to make better?

2:26 And I think this is like a great ex this story, it is a great example of that. So in 1999, the Marine Life Protection Act sat unused for two years in California. and after two failed implementation attempts to put it in in 2001 and 2002. there was ~ a real worry about what's gonna happen. Like it wasn't a dead law, it was still active, it was just underfunded Until in August 2004, the state entered a public-private partnership with a nonprofit funder, the Resources Legacy Foundation, it created the MLPA initiative to run the process region by region along the coast. Now, what's interesting is this came before a federal law that was established about marine spatial Is when President Obama was in power and he had the national ocean policy and its coastal marine spatial planning framework that put in didn't begin until July 2010 via executive order.

3:25 Now at that point, the California's MLPA process was already deep into its third and fourth regional phases, and the Central Coast region had been designated back in 2007. So this process was continuing after the 2004. inclusion of resources legacy foundation. And so we started to see all these, you know, these and these networks start to get added to the protection area system, which is really cool. So in each of the four regions that were carved out of this process, the actual design process worked like this: an appointed regional stakeholder group made up of local fishermen, conservationists, and other users drafted MPA proposals.

4:05 A science advisory team reviewed each proposal against ecological design principles. So habitat representation, habitat replication, MPA size, and spacing between protected areas, plus a level of protection. Rating scale for different allowed uses. The Department of Fish and Game and the MLPA initiative staff are also weighed in. So a policy-level Blue Ribbon Task Force reviewed the whole package and forwarded a recommendation to the state's Fish and Game Commission, the only body with legal authority to actually adopt the MPA. All of this happened in thousands of hours of public meetings, most of them recorded and archived over roughly a decade.

4:49 there was a huge conflict in this process. And the root cause of that conflict was the process gave the public a genuine seat at the table, but it did not accurately address tribal sovereignty and traditional gathering rights from the start. So on California's North Coast in particular, there were a bunch of tribal meetings. That argue that the MLPA framework only recognized commercial and recreational fishing categories, not traditional subsistence and cultural gathering. So that tension came to a head in July 2011 when more than 300 people, including members of 50 tribal nations, took over a blue ribbon task force meeting in Fort Bragg, Described by the participants at the time as the largest North Coast protest since 1990. The task force ultimately rejected language that would have terminated tribal gathering rights, and the North Coast region's final unified proposal reached by fishing, tribal, and environmental representatives together, was adopted in 2012, with a formal tribal gathering exception.

5:56 But the problem was the tribal leaders themselves noted that they accepted it with conditions rather than a full endorsement. So this is the what happens in a lot of these processes because it was so large and it it it looked at the entire state that it had groups in it in these four regions, but obviously in this case it didn't include the tribal groups, unfortunately get left out in a lot of these situations. So there was a lot of pushback to what happened throughout this process, eventually getting an agreement in place, but it wasn't a full endorsement, as I just mentioned. Because a lot of the tribal leaders are like, well, look, we took it with conditions, but it's not perfect, but we'd like to improve on it.

6:38 And unfortunately, in a lot of these situations, whether you're a fisher, whether you're a recreational diver, or you're some sort of stakeholder or rights holder like the tribal communities, a lot of the times not everybody's happy with the results. And for good reason, they may not have been fully represented at the actual time at the table and with a lot of the concerns that they've had. But during that time, There are times where you have all of this moving forward through adaptive management. as the Marine Protected Area Network is put in place, as it improved throughout this process, and that they had a formal setup for these networks of marine protected areas, which is, I think it was 124 protected areas within the network.

7:22 Then there comes time of actually putting it in place. monitoring it, evaluating it, and then redesigning it based on recommendations from the science and the public input. And that's where we're kind of left at this point. There was another 10 years of waiting, and recently an adaptive management process kicked off, which is what we talked to ANUPA about, which hasn't really gone in a great way. And we talked a little bit about that because they didn't talk about the science in this and they only had petitions from the public. But we're gonna talk about it later on this week in episodes where we're gonna say, hey, this is really important to talk about when you include the science, because it gives people the the official assessment of how these marine protected area networks are doing. And this is a big part of managing a marine protected area network. Because if you don't manage it, if you don't reassess it and reassess it and reassess and change and revise and adapt, then there's really no point in putting these protected areas in place. It takes money.

8:21 It takes time, it takes effort, and it takes the will of the people to have the patience and the understanding to meet together and and work on how they can improve the system for everyone, not just one party. So that's the episode for today. I want to kind of give you that explanation of what happened during the setup of the California Marine Protected Area System. Obviously, based on yesterday's episode with ANUPA, Things haven't really changed in the way. where people are being heard for their concerns. And it's actually getting more aggressive in the way that it's doing it because some groups are speaking over others and could be intimidating others in that process. So obviously there's a long way to go in this process.

9:02 The government needs to step up to make sure that everybody has their say and feels safe to have their say. But this was an episode about the history of the network of marine protected areas. We're gonna get into it all the rest of this week with different shows. That we have coming up. Tomorrow's episode is going to be on the actual adaptive management and ~ California's Ocean Safety Net actually working. We're gonna really talk about the evaluation and that assessment. don't forget to tune in tomorrow. Hit that follow button so you make sure you follow this podcast and don't miss tomorrow's episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.