Last month, the Yucca Valley town manager and town mayor were on the Up Close Show, in which one of the topics discussed was a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity to list the Joshua tree as a threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act. The Yucca Valley Town Council argued at its May 19 meeting that there are sufficient protections in place to protect the Joshua trees, including a native plant ordinance, and placing the trees on the threatened species list would prove to be too onerous for private property owners. Currently residents need to get a free permit from the town if a tree needs to be removed.
Managing editor Tami Roleff contacted the Center for Biological Diversity, and has its response…
“I actually had a Joshua tree fall across my driveway… I had to take pictures of it and go to the town and I had to get a permit and then I had the Joshua tree moved. What if I had to go to the state to do that and it was a month and a half … and a significant amount of money?”
Mayor Jeff Drozd said this was one reason why he opposed listing the Joshua tree as threatened.
However, the Center for Biological Diversity—which initiated the petition to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to list the Joshua tree as threatened, wrote in an email to Z1077 News, that “there is nothing in the definition of ‘take’ that would preclude an individual from moving aside a fallen Joshua tree branch that was blocking their driveway.” The term “take” means to hunt, pursue, catch, capture, or kill. Most relevant to Joshua trees, this means that an action likely to kill a Joshua tree would be prohibited without a permit.
In addition, it wrote the “Take of a listed species may be authorized if the take is incidental to an otherwise lawful activity.”
The Center also wrote that desert tortoises inhabit much of the same land as Joshua trees and are protected, so that projects that would need an incidental take permit for Joshua trees would also need one for tortoises. The Center concluded by noting that if the town of Yucca Valley were to form a Natural Communities Conservation Plan, as the town of Apple Valley has done, individual landowners would not have to apply for a take permit if their activity is consistent with the conservation plan.
