Opinion: To restore California’s ecosystems, we must adopt smarter permitting
California’s ecosystems underpin the state’s economy: They nurture and protect the state’s water supply, shorelines, agriculture, fisheries and wildlife. But many of these ecosystems are in dire health, and climate change is now accelerating the loss of biodiversity already underway. Ecosystem degradation is having ripple effects across the state. Severe problems with water supply dwindling populations of native wildlife, and the critical need to better manage and store carbon require urgent and large-scale action.
-Written by Letitia Grenier, program director at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, and Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow at the PPIC’s Water Policy Center.