(a) The Legislature finds and declares that it would be beneficial to identify species and habitat conservation initiatives at a regional scale, including actions to address the impacts of climate change and other wildlife stressors, in order to guide voluntary investments in conservation, and compensatory mitigation for impacts to ecological resources, including impacts to threatened and endangered species, other sensitive species, natural communities, ecological processes, and wildlife corridors.

(b) The purpose of this chapter is to promote the voluntary conservation of natural resources, including biodiversity and ecological processes, and to enhance resiliency to climate change and other threats. In order to further this goal, it is the policy of the state to encourage voluntary mechanisms to conserve biological and other ecological resources and to identify conservation actions, including actions to promote resiliency to the impacts of climate change and other stressors to species and habitat.

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(c) It is further the policy of the state to encourage voluntary mechanisms to identify and implement advance mitigation actions that do all of the following:

(1) Can be used to compensate for project impacts, including, but not limited to, infrastructure and renewable energy projects, more efficiently.

(2) Are effective ecologically.

(3) Will help to conserve regionally important biological and other ecological resources.

(d) In enacting this chapter, it is the intent of the Legislature to promote science-based conservation, including actions to promote resiliency to the impacts of climate change and other stressors. It is further the intent of the Legislature to create nonregulatory mechanisms to guide investments in conservation, infrastructure, and compensatory mitigation for impacts to natural resources, including impacts to threatened and endangered species, other sensitive species, natural communities, ecological processes, and connectivity.

(e) In enacting this chapter, it is not the intent of the Legislature to regulate the use of land, establish land use designations, or to affect, limit, or restrict the land use authority of any public agency.

(f) Further, in enacting this chapter, it is not the intent of the Legislature that an approved regional conservation investment strategy would be binding on independent public agency action within the strategy’s geographic scope.

(Added by Stats. 2016, Ch. 455, Sec. 2. (AB 2087) Effective January 1, 2017.)