AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE DAVIS COMMUNITY

We are residents, neighbors, and members of the Davis community writing to express our shared concern over the repeated disturbance of documented vernal pool habitat on the Village Farms property, and to ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), Yolo Habitat Conservancy, Davis City Council, and Yolo County Board of Supervisors a question we believe deserves a clear public answer: how did habitat for a federally endangered species, known and documented for two decades, continue to be disturbed despite the very regulatory frameworks put in place to prevent exactly this outcome?

We are encouraged that CDFW has opened an investigation into these impacts, and we write to make clear that this community expects it to be thorough, and to be pursued to the full extent the law allows. Our concern extends beyond this single investigation. Multiple layers of protection exist precisely to prevent this kind of outcome: CEQA review at the City level, USFWS and CDFW's own regulatory authority, and the Yolo Habitat Conservancy's Habitat Conservation Plan, which was established to coordinate exactly this kind of species protection across Yolo County. We are asking USFWS, CDFW, Yolo Habitat Conservancy, Davis City Council, and Yolo County Board of Supervisors, individually and together, to help this community understand how a well-documented population of a federally endangered species was mismanaged repeatedly across so many years without triggering earlier intervention — and what will change to close that gap going forward.

We want to be clear that this is not a concern about a single incident, but about a cumulative and ongoing process of habitat degradation. Discing a vernal pool's edge breaks down and shallows the basin over time, allowing upland plants to encroach and further reducing its ability to pond — a self-reinforcing cycle that leaves the pool shallower and less resilient with each round of disturbance, until it may become too shallow to pond at all. We believe this degradation is already visibly underway in the vernal pools on this project site, and that continued disturbance — even disturbance short of outright filling — will accomplish the same result over a longer timeline: the functional elimination of this habitat.

Given this documented history, we find it difficult to believe that the landowner did not know that further disturbance of this habitat carried legal risk. This population has been documented since 2004, was specifically identified and addressed in CDFW's own comments during the Village Farms environmental review, and was formally confirmed present as recently as March 2024 in survey results included in the certified EIR. Notably, the developer's own proposed project included a 47.1-acre Natural Habitat Area specifically to preserve this habitat — a commitment that, while no longer in effect now that voters have rejected the project, reflects the developer's own understanding that this habitat warranted protection rather than further disturbance. We believe the public is owed a clear explanation of how continued discing has been allowed to occur despite that documented history, and what has become of the protections — including the Yolo HCP/NCCP's covered activity process — that were supposed to prevent exactly this outcome.

Specifically, we respectfully request:

• That USFWS and CDFW jointly pursue this matter to its fullest legal conclusion, including all penalties available under applicable federal and state law, and make their findings available to the public.
• That USFWS and CDFW acknowledge that repeated discing of a vernal pool is more than mere harassment of the species living in it. Over successive years, discing degrades a pool's edge and prevents it from ponding long enough to complete the species' life cycle — resulting in take through the gradual elimination of the population, not a single dramatic event. This is a well-documented mechanism by which vernal pools and their dependent species have been lost to agricultural practices across the Central Valley, one we believe the agencies are already well aware of.
• That the City of Davis clarify what oversight mechanisms apply to documented sensitive habitat on parcels that have gone through CEQA review, regardless of whether an associated development is ultimately approved.
• That the Yolo County Board of Supervisors clarify what oversight and enforcement mechanisms apply to this parcel under its current Yolo County zoning and land use designation, given that the property has not been annexed into the City of Davis.
• That the Yolo Habitat Conservancy confirm publicly whether this property was ever brought into compliance with the Yolo HCP/NCCP's covered activity process, and if not, explain how repeated ground disturbance of documented habitat occurred outside that framework.

Davis has a long history of valuing the native species and the natural landscape and agricultural lands that surround it. The undersigned are not opposed to farming, to housing, or to this landowner's right to use their property — we are asking that the laws already on the books, written specifically to protect species like the vernal pool tadpole shrimp, be enforced as written. We would welcome a public response from USFWS, CDFW, Yolo Habitat Conservancy, Davis City Council, and Yolo County Board of Supervisors, and we thank you for your attention to this matter.