SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following: (a) California faces a biodiversity crisis, with nature in a steep decline. Scientists are documenting a rapid loss of natural areas and wildlife in California, the United States, and throughout the world, including all of the following:
(1) From 2001 to 2017, a quantity of natural areas equal to the size of a football field disappeared to development every 30 seconds in the United States, constituting more than 1,500,000 acres per year. During this period, California lost more than 1,000,000 acres of natural area.
(2) The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found that approximately 1,000,000 plant and animal species are threatened with extinction over the coming decades as a result of land conversion, water diversions, development, climate change, invasive species, pollution, other stressors, and direct exploitation, including wildlife trade.
(3) The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found that more than 500,000 terrestrial species have insufficient habitat for long-term survival without habitat restoration.
(4) At least 686 California species are at risk of future extinction, and native species in California have already declined by 20 percent.
(5) Climate change is accelerating the decline of nature in California and the United States by reducing the ability of ecosystems to provide clean water and regulate water flows, limiting the ability of nature to buffer communities against disasters, such as fires, storms, floods, and marine heatwaves. Many of these changes disproportionately impact the health of communities of color and indigenous populations, and have far-reaching effects on marine and terrestrial wildlife, including by altering habitats, forcing changes to migratory patterns, altering the timing of biological events, causing shifts in species distributions, and warming and acidifying the ocean.
(6) Nature, like the climate, is nearing a tipping point where the continued loss and degradation of the natural environment will push many ecosystems and wildlife species past the point of no return, threaten the health and economic prosperity of California and the United States, and increase the costs of natural disasters.
(b) Executive Order No. B-10-11 established a tribal advisor under the Governor and directed the tribal advisor to oversee and implement effective government-to-government consultation with tribes on policies that affect California tribal communities. Executive Order No. N-15-19 reaffirmed and incorporated by reference the principles in that order.
(c) The Natural Resources Agency adopted a tribal consultation policy in 2012 to ensure effective government-to-government consultation between the Natural Resources Agency, departments of the Natural Resources Agency, and Native American tribes and tribal communities to provide meaningful input into the development of regulations, rules, policies, programs, projects, plans, property decisions, and activities that may affect tribal communities.
(d) Governor Gavin Newsom released a Statement of Administration Policy on Native American Ancestral Lands on September 25, 2020, to encourage state entities to seek opportunities to support California tribes’ comanagement of and access to natural lands that are within a California tribe’s ancestral land and under the ownership or control of the State of California, and to work cooperatively with California tribes that are interested in acquiring natural lands in excess of state needs.
(e) To combat the climate and biodiversity crises, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order No. N-82-20, which did all of the following:
(1) Established a goal of the state to conserve at least 30 percent of California’s land and coastal waters by 2030.
(2) Established the California Biodiversity Collaborative to protect and restore the state’s biodiversity directing state agencies to consult with the collaborative on efforts to establish a baseline assessment of California’s biodiversity that, among others, uses traditional ecological knowledge.
(3) Directed the Natural Resources Agency to collaborate with tribal partners to incorporate tribal expertise and traditional ecological knowledge to better understand our biodiversity and the threats it faces.
(f) Traditional ecological knowledge can provide a fundamental tool for restoration and conservation management. Before European American contact, Native American tribes managed and stewarded California’s terrestrial and marine resources using traditional ecological knowledge and a wide array of traditional practices and techniques to maintain an environment capable of supporting large, thriving human, plant, and animal populations. Today, tribes continue to use these practices, which vary from tribe to tribe, but are generally focused on ecosystem interconnectivity, respecting the carrying capacity of the land, and viewing humans as an integral part of the environment.
(g) Tribal methods of protecting and managing land can be an essential and fundamental part of a concerted effort to successfully restore biodiversity. However, the state lacks a policy to partner and collaborate with Native American tribes to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge in the state’s land management and conservation activities.
(h) Tribes have an important role in protecting and managing land and should be represented at local and regional levels as advisors, managers, and comanagers to provide their expertise on region-specific conservative initiatives and actions.