Session Coordinators:
Ruth Goodfield, NOAA Restoration Center 
Erika Lovejoy, Sustainable Conservation 
Jake Shannon, North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board

The State has prioritized the 30x30 conservation and Cutting Green Tape initiatives, catalyzing agencies to develop new ways to address the urgent needs around habitat loss, species decline, and climate change.  Agencies are proactively responding to the call for action and collaborating with key stakeholders and experts to create wide-reaching efficient permitting tools that expand partnership with restoration project proponents and increase the State’s capacity to tackle environmental problems. This session will highlight newly developed and precedent-setting regulatory tools that create a separate permitting pathway for a wide variety of aquatic habitat restoration projects of all sizes. 

Sustainable Conservation collaborates with regulatory agencies and restoration proponents to create policy and regulatory incentives that save time and resources on project implementation. They will highlight major outcomes of their Statewide Aquatic Habitat Restoration Permitting Initiative and set the stage for state and federal agencies to talk about their new tools.  This includes discussion of the recently adopted and highly anticipated State Water Resources Control Board Statewide Restoration Permit and Programmatic Environmental Impact Report and the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Statewide Programmatic Restoration authorization for 72 species across California. These coordinated regulatory actions build off the work of NOAA Restoration Center’s progressive program which combines funding, technical assistance, and efficient permitting.  The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will also highlight their new Cutting Green Tape program actions that complement these efforts. The session will finish with an interactive panel discussion with the agencies to answer questions and talk about other steps needed to comprehensively move restoration forward.