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Now the state is dictating that the California Department of Forestry Support the federal HCP.

In a stunning reversal California Department of Fire and Forestry (CDF) Santa Cruz mountain Chief, Steve Wert announced that the department would support the federal imposition of a Habitat Conservation Plan for Santa Cruz county despite uncontroverted citizen input that such action takes private property and will lead to worsening fire risks and potential losses of human life...

Some see the HCP process as a key element for implementing within Santa Cruz the U.N. Agenda 21 Wildlands project. “When combined with the other attacks on owners of mountain property like the Fishnet 4C ordinance, the timber harvesting ordinance, the confiscatory new road standard proposed ordinance, this massive land management control program (HCP) will turn productive citizens into desperate ‘willing sellers’. The government and their NGO cronies will own the mountain just like they own the North Coast. The landscape will become unproductive and degraded. Eventually the forest will become off limits to people. That is the Wildlands project. It is happening all over the country at a quickening pace. Washington was right: ‘Private property and freedom are inseparable’. America is in trouble,” said Michael Shaw a fire safe participant.

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The worst of it is the damage these idiots do to the land they purport to protect. They know nothing of habitat restoration and the amount of WORK that it takes (the whole concept is alien to them as bureaucrats). The water-hemlock is filling whole watersheds with tons of poison. The French Broom and Cape Ivy are so thick that you can't walk through the forests at all. Star thistle is spreading everywhere and as of a year ago their official pesticide applicator didn't even know what it looks like. The pigs cause more surface erosion than development does. The oaks are so thick that they are especially susceptible to sudden oak death, and there they stand, waiting to burn. The fuel load and the evacuation routes are so bad that if the San Lorenzo Valley burns we could have thousands of deaths.

Meanwhile, the whole county is falling apart. The schools are beyond horrible and the University is the worst in the system. The traffic is a mess. Businesses can be sued for hiring discrimination on the basis of (are you ready) personal appearance. If the County Roads were even close to the standards they imposed for private driveways their tax base would go up 10%. That with price of housing as the least affordable in the nation. My 2,400 sft home on 14 acres just appraised for $930,000 and I PROMISE you (since I built it) that it's nothing that special.