Grant to Help City Monitor Wildlife Movement

A City of Carlsbad program to preserve open space and protect wildlife has been awarded a grant by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife to study the movement of wild animals in the city’s Habitat Management Plan preserves. 

The grant, called a “local assistance grant,” will provide $57,900 to tally animals as they move through and between the different preserves, to help provide new information about how to manage the open space for the benefit of the species that live there.

The city will match that amount with $46,625 in staff time and existing expenditures, and the Center for Natural Lands Management, which manages private preserves in the city under the Habitat Management Plan, will contribute $8,000 from its existing funding to assist, bringing the total cost of the study to $112,525.

Established in 2004, the City of Carlsbad’s Habitat Management Plan calls for the city to set aside 6,478 acres of natural open space after all new development has occurred; the city has set aside about 5,900 acres so far, more than 90 percent of the goal. 

“The first step is to preserve the species and the habitats upon which they depend, and the HMP is a significant step in achieving that goal,” said City of Carlsbad Senior Planner Mike Grim. “Now that we have the preserve mostly assembled and protected, we can look at how it’s functioning, and this wildlife corridor study will help us do that.” 

The Center for Natural Lands Management has already begun monitoring wildlife movement through some of the preserves, and the Fish & Wildlife grant will help expand the monitoring to other preserves throughout the city, said Grim, who manages the city’s Habitat Management Plan. The study will identify roadway crossings and “pinch-points” — constricted places in the preserves — and monitor wildlife movement through those areas to help city and preserve managers develop new techniques that will help wildlife thrive in the open space preserves.

The City of Carlsbad has a rich natural environment and is home to three lagoons, coastal sage scrub, oak woodlands and other types of natural open space. The Habitat Management Plan is one way the city is nearing its goal of setting aside 40 percent of Carlsbad as permanent open space, once all major development in the city is complete. 

Carlsbad is the only city in Northern San Diego County with an approved Habitat Management Plan. City officials worked for almost 15 years to perfect the plan, and it was approved by state and federal environmental agencies nine years ago. Having an approved Habitat Management Plan makes the city eligible for funding such as the local assistance grant that would not be available without one, and improves Carlsbad residents’ quality of life by protecting sensitive plant and animal species while preserving natural open space.

–City of Carlsbad