SECTION 1.
(a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(1) Native marine life in California’s estuaries and in coastal waters provides a variety of valuable ecological functions and ecosystem services. In particular, kelp, eelgrass, and native oysters form the foundations of diverse and productive nearshore ecosystems by supporting complex food webs and providing important habitat for a wide array of invertebrates, fishes, marine mammals, and birds, including red abalone, red sea urchin, groundfish, and threatened and endangered salmon and salmonid species.
(2) Healthy kelp forests, eelgrass meadows, and oyster beds are essential habitats that are fundamental to supporting California’s unique marine biodiversity and its $44,000,000,000 ocean economy. economy, according to data from 2015.
(3) Kelp, eelgrass, and native oysters have important cultural value to California’s indigenous peoples, who have inhabited and stewarded the coast for thousands of years. The severe decline in California’s kelp forests as well as the extirpation of native Olympia oysters has curtailed the use of these ecosystems for food, medicine, ceremony, and associated tribal nation livelihoods.
(4) California’s estuaries provide vital habitat for many organisms, including nursery habitat for juvenile salmon, as well as other important commercial species and the some species of forage fish that many species depend on. Eelgrass can provide a refuge for shellfish from the effects of ocean acidification acidification, to some degree, and help prevent erosion and maintain shoreline stability by anchoring seafloor sediment with its spreading roots and rhizomes.
(5) Olympia oyster populations,
which once supported a large and intense fishery, provide ecosystem benefits in the form of improved water quality, food resources, and critical structural habitat for numerous species. Once playing a major role connecting California’s estuarine waters to the seafloor through filtration and nutrient absorption, this formerly extensive three-dimensional habitat is now functionally absent throughout the state.
(6) Kelp forests and eelgrass meadows also provide a major coastal attraction for many Californians and enhance diverse recreational opportunities, including skin and scuba diving, coastal kayaking, wildlife viewing, and fishing. These activities are important to local economies and for promoting a strong connection to place and overall human well-being in communities.
(7) Kelp forests, eelgrass meadows, and native oyster beds play an important role as a nature-based solution to combat the climate crisis. These habitats provide climate mitigation and adaptation benefits by by, to some effect, attenuating waves and buffering shorelines against storms, relieving impacts from ocean acidification, and sequestering carbon.
(8) Marine vegetation vegetation, in some instances, can sequester up to 20 times more carbon than terrestrial forests, making marine vegetation a
potentially critical tool in California’s fight against climate change.
(9) Restoration of kelp forests, eelgrass meadows, and native oyster beds may directly benefits benefit the state’s efforts to improve biodiversity by creating healthy ocean ecosystems that can independently and sustainably maintain critical organization and functions over time in the face of external stressors.
(10) As California works toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, the state has the
opportunity to take advantage of natural climate solutions, such as eelgrass beds and kelp forests, known as blue carbon ecosystems, that capture and store carbon in soil, sediments, and plant matter.
(11) Despite their economic, ecological, and cultural importance, California’s marine ecosystems are facing significant threats. Losses of kelp, eelgrasses, and oysters have been driven by a history of overharvesting, coastal development, and pollution, as well as the growing impacts from climate change.
(12) Between 2014 and 2019, more than 95 percent of bull kelp forests in northern California, historically among the most productive and biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, were lost after compounding
following warm water events and continued climate-based combined with other climate change exacerbated threats.
(13) California’s eelgrass beds have severely declined over the last century. Loss of eelgrass in California is due to dredging,
diking, and pollution, all stressors that are now further compounded by sea level rise, warming waters, and changes in precipitation patterns.
(14) The state’s native oyster populations, which which, records suggest, historically formed extensive beds along the west coast, were severely overfished in the last two centuries to the point of near extinction. As a result, California’s bays and estuaries are devoid of an entire habitat that once played several roles in maintaining estuary health and fish productivity.
(15) The state, while valuing ecosystem restoration in its own right, has committed to
ambitious goals that coastal marine ecosystem restoration advances: increasing biodiversity through the 30x30 initiative, and implementing nature-based solutions to the climate crisis, among others.
(16) State agencies have identified and prioritized the need for restoration of key marine habitats. The Ocean Protection Council has outlined specific 2025 goals targeted at recovering both eelgrass and kelp, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife is currently developing a Kelp Restoration and Management Plan to deliver a comprehensive strategy for managing and restoring this impacted ecosystem.
(17) California must increase the scale and pace of its coastal restoration efforts with respect to kelp, eelgrass, and oysters to recover species of concern, restore ocean ecosystems,
and address the climate crisis. In order to achieve large-scale coastal habitat restoration, the state must explore new permitting, interagency coordination, capacity building, and public funding approaches to
enable ecological restoration to occur more quickly, simply, and cost effectively.
(18) Large-scale marine ecosystem restoration has been successfully achieved in other parts of the country and the world to meet the pace and scale of decline for critical biogenic habitats like kelp, oysters, and eelgrass. Large bays in the State of Florida have witnessed massive eelgrass returns through improved management and restoration. Japan and Korea have led on extensive restoration of kelp forests, and in Australia and several locations in the United States, such as the States of Virginia, Florida, and Texas, practitioners have effectively scaled restoration of oyster reefs. Large-scale ecosystem restoration delivers multiple societal benefits, including jobs, economic impact, and cultural connectivity.
(19) Investing in habitat restoration is good for the economy of California. Nationally, According to the nonprofit corporation The Nature Conservancy, and the management consulting company Bain & Company, nationally, every $1,000,000 invested in restoration yields $1,600,000 to $2,600,000 in induced economic output, including as many as 33 jobs. For example, in the United States, the national market size of oyster restoration is $80,000,000 annually, directly supporting 1,500 jobs and contributing to $210,000,000 of economic output. However, the State of California is missing out on these jobs and economic benefits to residents, as California represents less than 1 percent of that
market.
(20) A recent study by the nonprofit corporations The Nature Conservancy and Earth Economics analyzing best available spatial and observational data for kelp forests, eelgrass meadows, and native oyster beds, in consultation with leading restoration practitioners and in consideration of the historical and contemporary persistence of these habitats, determined that there are a total of 32,079 potentially restorable acres for these critical marine habitats, including 5,267 acres of kelp forests, 16,584 acres of eelgrass meadows, and 10,228 acres of native oyster beds.
(b) Therefore, it is the intent of the Legislature to
have the Natural Resources Agency establish acreage-based targets, informed by the best available scientific information, credible science for kelp forests, eelgrass meadows, and native oyster beds by 2050, at a magnitude commensurate with the level of observed decline.
(c) It is also the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would establish a fund, known as the Ocean Restoration and Recovery Fund, as a dedicated long-term source of grant funding to catalyze large-scale restoration projects that restore and improve native kelp forests, eelgrass meadows, and oyster beds under the jurisdiction of the state.