by Andrew Christie
The proposed Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for the Oceano Dunes – drafted by the California Department of Parks and Recreation (CDPR) to bring it into compliance with the Endangered Species Act by reducing the damage done to endangered species by off-highway vehicles (OHVs) – has a problem.
Actually, the HCP – first drafted in 2020 and revised in 2025 for submission to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) -- has multiple problems, but they all come down to one problem: The persistent belief that the conservation plan mandated by the Endangered Species Act must “balance” the need to keep species from going extinct with the need to cater to the recreational preference of a particular interest group.
In brief, State Parks’ Habitat Conservation Plan for the Oceano Dunes has an infected appendix. Specifically, Appendix G in the guidelines for the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which makes the following appearance in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) accompanying the Habitat Conservation Plan:
8.3.1 Thresholds of Significance
Based on CEQA Guidelines Appendix G, the HCP would have a significant environmental impact related to recreation and public access if it would:
• Increase the use of existing neighborhood and regional parks or other recreational
facilities such that substantial physical deterioration of the facility would occur or be
accelerated, or
• Include recreational facilities or require the construction or expansion of recreational facilities which might have an adverse effect on the environment.
In addition, CDPR has determined the project would have a significant environmental impact related to recreation and public access in the project area if it would:
• Substantially limit, reduce, or interfere with established coastal recreational opportunities or public access. [Emphasis added]
One of these things is not like the others. The real categories of projects that might have significant environmental impacts have nothing to do with any of the proposed measures to reduce the harms done to endangered species by motorized vehicles in the Oceano Dunes. But the CEQA guidelines state that the Threshold of Significance checklist “may be tailored to satisfy individual agencies’ needs and project circumstances.” Given an inch, State Parks has taken a mile, carving a loophole in this provision and driving a 40-foot toy hauler through it. Thus do actions involving “recreational facilities which might have an adverse effect on the environment” morph into a vague “environmental impact related to recreation,” and the law protecting the environment somehow becomes a law protecting environmentally destructive activities.
This is not the first time State Parks has floated this new addition to environmental law. In 2016, State Parks produced a Draft Program EIR for the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area (ODSVRA) Dust Control Program that purported to find an “impact” in the fact that the dust control project would not “perpetuate and enhance recreational use of OHVs in the ODSVRA” and attempted to change the subject from potential environmental impacts under CEQA to alleged conflicts with the ODSVRA Development Plan.
In response, the SLO County Air Pollution Control District (APCD) commented that State Parks’ Draft Program EIR, “has misinterpreted the stated goals of the Consent Decree Agreement” implementing dust control measures and noted its novel interpretation of CEQA in declaring that a dust control project would have “a significant environmental impact related to recreation” because it would reduce the size of the riding area. As the APCD concisely put it, State Parks was attempting the “creation of their own significance threshold for impacts to recreation that is found only in this document and goes beyond what is defined in the CEQA guidelines.”
Whether trying to hinder a dust control project or straying from the impacts of off-road vehicles on sensitive flora and fauna, State Parks persists in determining that measures to control dust emissions or protect endangered species would have an environmental impact on the ability of off-road vehicles to roam freely through a coastal dunes complex. Then as now, State Parks attempts to stand the California Environmental Quality Act on its head to pretend that off-road recreation is an activity that merits environmental protection.
This distortion of environmental law infects all 602 pages of the Draft Habitat Conservation Plan for the Oceano Dunes District and the 418 pages of the draft recirculated Environmental Impact Report.
To be fair, the HCP includes a number of monitoring, salvage and avoidance measures which should reduce harms to listed species if they function as advertised. But the level of faith that State Parks has in those measures may be measured by the fact that they are requesting a federal permit for an annual take of 16 plovers when they have never reported a take of more than 10 in any year. If the permitted level of take is exceeded, all activities in the dunes must halt except for recovery work. In other words, State Parks is projecting an increase in the take of listed species at the Oceano Dunes after implementing the measures in their Habitat Conservation Plan. As that level of harm is greater than the current one, which resulted in the court judgment ordering a Habitat Conservation Plan, the status quo would presumably result in less harm.
Finally, this particular HCP rationale for reducing the habitat of a listed species is kind of personal for us:
9.2.3 Alternative 3: Permanent Year-Round Exclosures
“The Consent Decree signed by Sierra Club and CDPR… stipulates that the CDPR HCP application to the USFWS would support a northern boundary of the seasonal exclosure at Post 7. This alternative conflicts with the Consent Decree by maintaining the northern boundary of the seasonal exclosure at Post 6 and thus does not achieve the project objective of facilitating implementation of legal settlement conditions and obligations.”
This is a reference to the first time State Parks was legally compelled (by the Sierra Club) to comply with the Endangered Species Act in 2004. Currently, State Parks is being legally compelled by the Center for Biological Diversity to comply with the Endangered Species Act. That clause in our consent decree having satisfied the urge to support a reduction of habitat in its HCP application and defend the indefensible, the agency can now return to the provisions of the consent decree “notwithstanding” and issue a final HCP that does not attempt to override the Endangered Species Act by eliminating habitat because “reducing or eventually eliminating the 6 Exclosure ensures CDPR can better meet the recreational needs of the public under the HCP as proposed.”
The position taken by State Parks throughout the Habitat Conservation Plan and its Environmental Impact Report stands in stark contrast to the historic Supreme Court ruling in TVA v. Hill, the first legal test of the Endangered Species Act, in which the Court found that when balancing competing interests in determining how to implement that law, “the balance has been struck in favor of affording endangered species the highest of priorities.”
We are not in the Upside Down. There is no California Recreational Quality Act. And the purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to protect and recover imperiled species and their habitat, not to reduce their habitat for the expansion of off-road riding areas and secure a permit to do more harm than is being done now.
TAKE ACTION
The Habitat Conservation Plan and Recirculated Draft EIR can be read here.
On January 13 at 6 p.m., State Parks will hold a virtual public meeting for the purpose of receiving public comment on the Draft EIR. You must register via the registration link prior to joining the meeting.
Written comments on the Draft EIR must be sent by 5 p.m. on January 23, 2026. Send your comments to comment@oceanoduneshcp.com, or mail to Ronnie Glick, Senior Environmental Scientist, California Department Parks and Recreation, Oceano Dunes District, 340 James Way, Ste. 270, Pismo Beach, CA 93449.