Mostly in vain, residents of San Bernardino County’s desert areas, most particularly in and around Barstow, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms and several surrounding areas have been trying to convince California wildlife officials that the permit fees to improve property on land that involves Western Joshua Trees are too onerous.
In 2023, California approved the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act. Now the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is under the gun to complete by June 30 the California’s Joshua Tree Conservation Plan, whereupon it will be fully implemented.
For many desert residents, the element of the plan most important to them is that aspect of it which will entail the fees to be paid by landowners when they undertake development on their property within a distance of 186 feet or less from Western Joshua Trees.
There is widespread concern among desert residents and landowners that the fees required to do work near western Joshua trees are too high. Despite those sentiments, Fish and Wildlife employees maintain that their hands are tied and the fees being charged, were, essentially etched into cement by an act of the legislature based upon previous discussions and determinations.
In accordance with suggestions by the Department of Fish and Wildlife, both the California Senate and the California Assembly layered into the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act a permitting process to assist in regulating how the land upon which Western Joshua Trees, known by their scientific name, Yucca brevifolia, are located are disturbed.
A petition for the Yucca brevifolia’s endangered listing and the protections that would come with it was made by the Center for Biodiversity in 2019. In September 2020 the California Department of Fish and Wildlife recommended that Joshua trees be temporarily protected while Dr. Cameron Barrows of the University of California Riverside, Dr. Erica Fleishman of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, Dr. Timothy Krantz with the University of Redlands, Dr. Lynn Sweet with the University of California, Riverside and Dr. Jeremy B. Yoder from California State University Northridge undertook the completion of a peer-reviewed report and recommendation relating to the western Joshua tree.
According to that report, released in April 2022, the outlook for the plant, while less than encouraging, is not absolutely critical.
“The population size and area occupied by [the] western Joshua tree have declined since European settlement largely due to habitat modification and destruction, a trend that has continued to the present,” Barrows, Fleishman, Krantz, Sweet and Yoder collectively stated. “Primary threats to the species are climate change, development and other human activities, and wildfire. Available species distribution models suggest that areas predicted to be suitable for [the] western Joshua tree based on 20th Century climate data will decline substantially through the end of the 21st Century as a result of climate change, especially in the southern and lower elevational portions of its range.”
Nevertheless, the scientists said, “the department [the California Department of Fish and Wildlife] does not currently have information demonstrating that loss of areas with 20th Century suitable climate conditions will result in impacts on existing populations that are severe enough to threaten to eliminate the species from a significant portion of its range by the end of the 21st Century. The effects of development and other human activities will cause western Joshua tree habitat and populations to be lost, particularly in the southern part of the species’ range, but many populations within the range of the species are protected from development, suggesting that a significant portion of the species’ range will not be lost by development alone. Wildfire can also kill over half of western Joshua trees in areas that burn, and wildfire impacted approximately 2.5% of the species’ range in each of the last two decades, but wildfire does not appear to result in loss of range, only lowering of abundance within the species’ range.”
The Western Joshua Tree Protection Act was formulated and presented to the California Legislature in 2023 by Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration after the California Fish and Game Commission in June 2022 deadlocked 2-to-2 on whether to confer endangered species status on the Western Joshua Tee.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has been holding online workshops at various forums in populated desert areas to present the Joshua Tree Conservation Plan. The plan was mandated by the act. .
There are two fee schedules applied for those obtaining a permit to engage in development work on property where existing Western Joshua Trees are growing. One of those is what is referred to as the regular or standard fee area. Those who disturb or uproot a tree in the standard fee area, a fee of $2,544.75 is required for every tree five meters or more in height. For those trees greater than one meter but less than five meters, the fee is $509. For each tree less than one meter high, the fee is $152.75. In San Bernardino County, the standard fee area includes the area surrounding Joshua Tree national park and extending westward toward the Victor Valley, including Morongo Valley, Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms, Panorama Heights, Harmony Acres, Sunfair, Hidden River, Palm Wells, Little Morongo Heights, Pioneer Town, Landers, Homestead Valley, Flamingo Heights, Wonder Valley, East Lucerne Valley, Amboy, Ludlow, Newberry Springs, Daggett Yermo, Barstow and Hesperia.
The reduced fee area in San Bernardino County includes west Lucerne Valley, part of Victorville, a portion of Apple Valley, Adelanto, Bell Mountain Oro Grande , Bryman Silverlakes Helendale , Hodge, Kramer and Kramer Junction. Within the reduced fee area, a mitigation fee of $1,017.75 is charged for every tree of five meters or greater that is uprooted , removed or disturbed, $303.50 for tree larger than one meter in height but less than five meters and $152.75 for trees disturbed under one meter high.
While most residents said they could live with the costs in the reduced fee area if they were being called upon to get construction or improvement permits on property where one, two or three trees were involved, they believed the state was asking far too much in circumstances where a property had a dozen or dozens of trees. They protested that in most cases the fees were not being assessed so that the trees could be removed, but simply because the trees were on the property. In such cases, in those places where the standard fees applied, relatively minor improvements, such as room or garage editions that would entail relatively minor construction costs of $5,000 to $10,000 would require additional outlays of $50,000 or $60,000 or even more.
“My wife and I are thinking of adding on a bedroom for my mother-in-law to come live with us and while we’re at it, put in a den and lengthen the dining room by another six to eight feet,” Ron Covan told the Sentinel. “I was going to do most of the work myself and it would run us $14,000 to $18,000, tops, including town permits. But we have 14 Joshua Trees on our acreage, nine of which are over 15 feet. We aren’t going to touch any of the trees. The nearest one is 48 feet from our house. But it is going to cost us an added $26,000. Who can afford that? This is not reasonable.”
While staff with the Department of Fish and Wildlife said they are sympathetic to those being impacted by the law, the authority to change it lies at a level far above their pay grade and rank.
The law now in effect in California requires that any work done within 186 feet of a tree be done with what is referred to as an “incidental take” permit. Those who are potentially subject to that regulation emphasize that in in some, many or even most cases, there is no “taking” involved, as the trees are not to be disturbed in the normal meaning of the word. Still, the State of California interprets any alteration of the ground or landscape on a parcel where a Western Joshua Tree is or Western Joshua Trees are located as potentially, and therefore actually, disturbing the trees.
The reality is, the Department of Fish and Wildlife maintains, that any construction work near the trees can have a deleterious impact on a tree’s roots.
A major issue is that in Yucca Valley, the entire city over the next 20 years is moving from septic systems to a sewer system. Individual property owners in the city are under a legal and procedural mandate that originated with the state government to go along with the transition. It now appears that the State of California is now requiring that those property owners pay the state what many consider to be exorbitant fees to comply with that state mandate.
The Hi Desert Water District is the governmental authority and lead agency effectuating the construction of the sewer system and the sewer and trunk lines that attend it.
Some Yucca Valley resident have begun to talk about suing, either as a collection of a few residents or as a class in a class action suit the water district, the town, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health and the State of California over the matter, alleging they are being forced into having the sewer lines constructed on their property by a confluence of governmental entities. It is unfair that in complying with that mandate, they are being subjected to onerous fees that they will not be willingly paying.