NCA designation is not a plot, but a conservation tool, designed with the primary aim of facilitating collaborative planning and management strategies among the various public agencies controlling portions of a sensitive area, and providing a mechanism for private landowners in that area to voice their concerns and establish an effective partnership with those public owners in order to further common goals.
Contrary to the impression Indrieri may have conveyed, it does not establish additional layers of bureaucracy, restrict the powers of local government, or impose any burdens whatsoever upon private landowners, whose participation is entirely voluntary. Far from being a "deceptive land grab" plotted by malign outside forces bent on furthering a hidden "environmental agenda," NCA designation has as one of its central objectives the enhancement of the economic viability of the privately owned working landscape by increasing opportunities to obtain conservation easements, watershed improvement grants, and subsidiary recreational income. Private owners who would prefer to pass up these benefits are completely free to do so.
Two nuggets of truth are buried in Indrieri's strange melange of innuendo and false assertions: she's quite right in stating that NCA designation can be expected to bring additional money to the area, to the benefit of surrounding gateway communities as well as public and private landowners within the Conservation Area itself. And she's also right in suggesting that members of the public should take steps to inform themselves about the proposal.
A good place to start would be to check out the information – including maps and photographs – that is available on the local Sierra Club website at http://redwood.sierraclub.org/lake/brbnca.htm.
Victoria Brandon is chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group.
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