About the Project
The City of Lincoln, the County of Placer, the Placer County Transportation Authority and the Placer County Water Agency have initiated a collaborative process to prepare and implement a Natural Communities Conservation Plan/Habitat Conservation Plan (NCCP/HCP) for the western portion of Placer County. The local permittees, in association with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Game, stakeholder groups and the general public will develop a long-range plan to protect and enhance ecological diversity and function within a large section of Placer County, while allowing for currently planned development and growth. The Plan will provide a framework for the protection of natural resources while streamlining and improving the environmental permitting process for both private and public development including activities such as road, water, and other infrastructure construction and maintenance work. The plan will create a number of new habitat reserves that will be larger in scale and more ecologically valuable than the fragmented, piecemeal habitats currently yielded by mitigating projects on an individual basis.
Goals of the Placer County Conservation Plan (PCCP) include:
1. Protect Land
Combine and leverage public and private dollars to protect habitat, wildlife, and agricultural land and retain the functionality of ecosystems in Placer County. Lands are protected through two means, both of which must include a property owner who identifies him or herself as a willing seller: 1) the purchase of land; or 2) the purchase of a conservation easement which compensates the property owner for their development rights, but does not transfer ownership of the property.. The proposed PCCP is intended to directly provide regulatory coverage for 34 special status species and for federally regulated wetlands, as well as indirectly protect the habitat of hundreds of plant and animal species
2. Financial Benefit
Maximize value and minimize conflict by granting County government the environmental regulation authority. Land use planning becomes cohesive and localized. Implementation of the proposed PCCP will result in improved cost predictability; voluntary, participating landowners will know the total cost of mitigation well in advance of a project’s environmental review.
3. Efficient Permitting Process
Connect property owners and developers to one agency with environmental expertise in order to make efficient decisions in planning and developing. The proposed PCCP will serve as a comprehensive permitting solution for species and natural resource related environmental regulations in Western Placer County allowing land use decisions to be made to maximize local benefits.
4. Landowner Benefit
Provide property owners with options. On a voluntary basis, landowners may sell or donate their land potentially increasing its value for conservation, or gain permanent protection of resources on their land. Property owners may also choose to develop their land and still are left with many options. The proposed PCCP is intended to respect private property rights now and in the future.
5. Landscape Level Conservation
Improve mitigation through large-scale land conservation and better monitoring. The PCCP will provide regulatory certainty over the next 50 years; mitigation expectations will not change drastically with the PCCP in place and conservation will be implemented at a regional/landscape level.
Preparation of this website was funded in part from Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund (Section 6) Planning Grants administered by the California Department of Fish and Game through Agreement # P1182013. The Agreement, which is for use of $350,000 of Federal funding, is for several work products including this website.