The Legislature finds and declares that:

(a) Areas containing diverse ecological and geological characteristics are vital to the continual health and well-being of the state’s natural resources and of its citizens.

(b) Many habitats and ecosystems that constitute the state’s natural diversity are in danger of being lost.

(c) Connectivity between wildlife habitats is important to the long-term viability of the state’s biodiversity.

(d) Preserving and connecting high-quality habitat for wildlife can create habitat strongholds.

(e) Increasingly fragmented habitats threaten the state’s wildlife species.

(f) There is an opportunity to provide incentive for private landowners to maintain and perpetuate significant local natural areas in their natural state.

(g) Efforts to preserve natural areas have been fragmented between federal, state, local, and private sectors.

(h) Analysis of the state’s habitat connectivity benefits from the consideration of all relevant data, including information from private and public landowners.

(i) The department’s existing mapping activities and products should be developed and sustained.

(j) The importance of wildlife corridors to assist in adapting to climate change has been recognized by such groups as the Western Governors’ Association, which unanimously approved a policy to protect wildlife migration corridors and crucial wildlife habitat in 2007. Individual local, state, and federal agencies have also adopted policies aimed at protecting wildlife corridors and habitat connectivity, in order to protect ecosystem health and biodiversity and to improve the resiliency of wildlife and their habitats to climate change. However, these efforts could be enhanced through establishment of a statewide policy to protect important wildlife corridors and habitat linkages where feasible and practicable.

(Amended by Stats. 2015, Ch. 625, Sec. 2. (AB 498) Effective January 1, 2016.)