3. Sensitive Natural Communities

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3. Sensitive Natural Communities

đź“… DateThursday, February 5
đź“Ť AreaHall C
⏰ Time10:30 am – 12:15 pm
Video Recording
From County to regionally based efforts, scores of people & entities work to identify, conserve or restore threatened and endangered habitats across California. Highlights from around the state underscore the continued needs for conserving and managing these special communities and places in the state.
SESSION CHAIRS
Teresa A. Sholars1, Jaime Ratchford2

1California Native Plant Society Dorothy King Young Chapter; College of the Redwoods, Fort Bragg, CA, United States. 2California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Sacramento, CA, United States

Teresa Sholars
California Native Plant Society Dorothy King Young Chapter; College of the Redwoods
Teresa Sholars has a Masters in Ecology from University of California, Davis, and spent 4 years in the Ph.D. program in systematic botany at the University of California, Berkeley, leaving due to a family death. She authored Lupine Treatments in the Jepson Manual, Flora of North America, Legumes of Arizona and wrote the stand-alone field guide Lupines of California. She has authored chapters in various publications on redwood forest ecology and north coast vegetation. Currently she is an Adjunct Professor and Curator of the Herbarium at the Mendocino College Coast Campus. She teaches Flora of Mendocino Coast, Mushrooms and Mycorrhizae and the Genus Lupinus for the Jepson Workshop program. Since 2014 she has been leading a volunteer team, doing vegetation surveys for the California Native Plant Society. For many years, she has been a Board member for Northern California Botanists and serves on the editorial board for Artemisia.
Jaime Ratchford
California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Jaime Ratchford is a Senior Vegetation Ecologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program. She has worked as a vegetation ecologist in California for more than twelve years.

3.1 Sensitive Natural Communities: Their Importance as a Key Conservation Strategy for Protecting All Species

Teresa A Sholars

Dorthy King Young Chapter, California Native Plant Society, Mendocino Coast, CA, United States

Description or Abstract
Sensitive natural communities (SNC) are communities that are of limited distribution statewide or within a county or region and are often vulnerable to environmental effects of development projects. Although not all SNC contain rare plants, they often do, so their identification adds another layer of protection for our rare species. However, only identifying the location of a rare plant protects an individual population at best. At worst, development avoids the rare plant by flagging or fencing but fails to protect the habitat of the rare plant to ensure long term survival. Decades of working as rare plant chair for the DKY chapter has provided us with information showing that simply protecting the location where rare plants grow is often not enough. In addition, conservation of communities allows for niche survival of many species. There are many SNC that lack any rare species, so these areas are the most vulnerable to destruction because they are often not identified in botanical surveys. We need to educate our local entities to insist that all SNCs are surveyed as mandated in the botanical survey protocols.
Presenter Bios
Teresa Sholars
California Native Plant Society Dorothy King Young Chapter; College of the Redwoods
Teresa Sholars has a Masters in Ecology from University of California, Davis, and spent 4 years in the Ph.D. program in systematic botany at the University of California, Berkeley, leaving due to a family death. She authored Lupine Treatments in the Jepson Manual, Flora of North America, Legumes of Arizona and wrote the stand-alone field guide Lupines of California. She has authored chapters in various publications on redwood forest ecology and north coast vegetation. Currently she is an Adjunct Professor and Curator of the Herbarium at the Mendocino College Coast Campus. She teaches Flora of Mendocino Coast, Mushrooms and Mycorrhizae and the Genus Lupinus for the Jepson Workshop program. Since 2014 she has been leading a volunteer team, doing vegetation surveys for the California Native Plant Society. For many years, she has been a Board member for Northern California Botanists and serves on the editorial board for Artemisia.

3.2 Vegetation Map Data Tiles and Sensitive Natural Community Ranking

Betsy Harbert, Rosalie Yacoub, Mikala Tator

California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Sacramento, CA, United States

Description or Abstract
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program (VegCAMP) facilitates the production of fine-scale vegetation maps for California following the Survey of California Vegetation (SCV) standards. VegCAMP also provides sensitivity ranks for natural communities (i.e. vegetation types) to support environmental review processes such as CEQA, meant to mitigate impacts to sensitive natural communities. Fine-scale vegetation maps are integral to data-informed sensitivity ranks for natural communities.

VegCAMP has over 100 project-level fine-scale vegetation maps and natural community location data available online through the BIOS platform. However, querying across these information sources to inform natural community sensitivity rankings and determine statewide distributions of natural communities is a challenge. To address this, VegCAMP combined numerous datasets across larger geographical regions, aligning them to the SCV standard using ArcGIS tools and custom Python scripts, in a vegetation tiling layer project. This tiling layer will create more accessible data, allowing users to query and visualize natural communities over broader regions.

We will discuss the development process of the tiling layer and its current and long-term impacts for our data users. This project streamlines the natural community sensitivity ranking process and will help facilitate the development of a statewide sensitive natural community map. In addition, it ensures efficient access to SCV vegetation map data, including sensitive natural communities, which will better inform landscape conservation and management decisions, assessment of change over time, and other statewide analyses.
Presenter Bios
Betsy Harbert
California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Betsy is a vegetation ecologist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program (VegCAMP) where she works to classify and map vegetation within California. She has worked as an ecologist and botanist for various NGOs and government agencies since 2008, working to describe plant communities in California grasslands, deserts, wetlands, and mountains. She graduated from CSU Colorado with a Masters in 2015 in Ecology, focusing on describing plant communities within montane wetlands. She’s continued that work through plant community restoration within montane meadows, research in support of the National Wetland Plant list, and leading educational workshops on wetland plants and plant communities.

3.3 Impacts of Groundwater Removal on Sensitive Natural Communities: Fish Slough Under Threat

Allegra Davis

California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bishop, CA, United States

Description or Abstract
Fish Slough is a spring-fed alkali wetland located in Inyo and Mono Counties in Eastern California. Geographic isolation, geology, and climate have resulted in a rare ecosystem, supporting 14 special status species, 2 species endemic to Fish Slough, and over 15 sensitive natural communities. Declines in groundwater levels and spring flows over the past several decades have affected water availability for groundwater dependent vegetation communities and the plant and wildlife species that depend on them. California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Inland Deserts Region (Region 6), including its Fisheries Branch, Land Management Program, and Habitat Conservation and Planning Branch, have been working in collaboration to address threats to this ecosystem.

Using a fine scale vegetation map created by CDFW’s Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program (VegCAMP) from 2010-2012, the Region has been able to detect changes in composition and cover of groundwater dependent vegetation in Fish Slough. The map, which depicts the distribution, density, and quality of the vegetation within Fish Slough based on ground-truthed and remotely sensed data, contains hundreds of monitoring points with photographs and keyed vegetation associations, which the Region re-visited 12 years later. CDFW has paired these vegetation change-detection efforts with a network of shallow-groundwater monitoring piezometers, the installation of monitoring wells drilled into the deep aquifer, and an isotope study to determine groundwater sources and flowpaths. Through this data collection effort, CDFW seeks to document the impact of groundwater decline on sensitive natural communities and understand the causes of the groundwater decline seen in Fish Slough.
Presenter Bios
Allegra Davis
California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Allegra Davis is a land manager with California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Inland Deserts Region in Bishop, California. Her work involves land management and invasive plant management on the 40,000 acres of CDFW wildlife areas and ecological reserves in Inyo, Mono and Northern San Bernardino counties. From the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada to remote basins in Death Valley, Allegra works to manage land for the benefit of California’s fish, wildlife, and plants.

3.4 Rooted in Community: The Ecological Significance of California Walnut Woodlands to Avifauna

Natasha Khanna-Dang1, 2, Dr. Eric Wood1

1California State University, Los Angeles, CA, United States. 2Arroyos and Foothills Conservancy, Pasadena, CA, United States

Description or Abstract
Changes in land use following Euro-American colonization resulted in the severe reduction of the endemic Southern California black walnut (Juglans californica) and its woodland habitat. We analyzed the availability of trees and large shrubs to feeding behavior of birds in eight patches of California walnut woodland in Los Angeles County during the breeding and nonbreeding periods of 2023. We related habitat features adjacent to patches to bird foraging behavior and compared bird feeding patterns relative to tree and shrub availability, documenting 49 species of trees and shrubs (17,904 plant observations) and 49 species of birds (1,009 foraging observations). Total counts of native tree and shrubs (R2kl = 0.30; p <0.10), and native tree and shrub richness (R2kl = 0.64; p <0.001) were positive predictors of counts of feeding birds. Conversely, building density adjacent to the patches (R2kl = 0.77; p <0.001) and non-native tree and shrub counts (R2kl = 0.71; p <0.001) were negative predictors of feeding bird counts. Birds foraged on western sycamore (Platanus racemosa), coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), and blue elderberry (Sambucus mexicana) in higher proportion to their availability in the woodlands (ranging from 14% to 68% higher use relative to a plant’s availability). I will share our findings on the importance of these woodlands to the larger ecosystem and discuss how ecological research can intersect with both conservation and social justice issues. This research was directly inspired by the anti-gentrification efforts of community groups affiliated with Takaape' Washuut Black Walnut Day in Northeast Los Angeles.
Presenter Bios
Natasha Khanna-Dang
Arroyos and Foothills Conservancy
Natasha Khanna-Dang works as an urban conservation biologist for the Arroyos and Foothills Conservancy in the Greater Los Angeles Area on land acquisition for creating wildlife corridors. They completed their Master of Science degree in Environmental Science at California State University, Los Angeles in 2024. Natasha is also an environmental educator and believes in the importance of intersectional ecology – ecological research that intersects with issues of environmental and social justice.

3.5 Widespread, Abundant, and Imperiled: the Dilemma of Western Joshua Tree (Yucca brevifolia) and the Power of Concerted Conservation

Mr. Drew Kaiser

California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Sacramento, CA, United States

Description or Abstract
The story of western Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) embodies a unique and difficult conservation dilemma where a currently widespread and abundant plant species is threatened by many factors, including climate change, wildfire, and development, that could lead to a significant range reduction in California over time. The California Endangered Species Act (CESA) can present significant financial and logistical hurdles for the hundreds of thousands of people with this species in their backyard. But the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act (WJTCA) of 2023 presented a solution, codifying a new approach to managing and conserving an imperiled species in California that would otherwise be prohibited under CESA. In particular, the WJTCA creates new streamlined permitting systems to support landowners, a dedicated fund the State can use to target high priority areas, like climate refugia, for acquisition and conservation, and it requires the development of a Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan to lay out the State’s approach to conserving the species. Incorporating outreach to governmental agencies, California Native American Tribes, and the public, the first draft of the Conservation Plan was developed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and adopted by the Fish and Game Commission in August 2025.

In this presentation, we briefly discuss the differences between CESA and WJTCA, the development of the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Plan, and how the Plan will seek a more concerted, holistic approach to conserving a widespread, abundant, and imperiled species.
Presenter Bios
Drew Kaiser
California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW)
Drew Kaiser is a Senior Environmental Scientist (Specialist) with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). He was hired by CDFW in June 2023 to provide technical support for the planning and implementation of the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act. Prior to his current position, he spent 12 years working for the National Park Service in Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park. He has also been on the board of the Southern California Botanists since 2019 and was President for the 2024-2025 term. In his free time, he enjoys backpacking, brewing beer, and volunteering with the GLORIA Great Basin Chapter.

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Moulton Niguel Water District

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Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

California Poppy

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Barona Band of Mission Indians

Carol Witham

Inland Empire Resource Conservation District

Land Trust of Santa Cruz County

Linda and David Chipping

Vern Goehring

Northern California Bontanists

Stillwater Sciences

East Bay Regional Parks

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Rutherford and Bransfield

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The mission of the California Native Plant Society is to protect California’s native plants and their natural habitats, today and into the future, through science, education, stewardship, gardening, and advocacy.

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