Statement of Policy - Nonvascular Plants
Adopted March 1992
Concerns Relating to Conservation of Nonvascular Plants
The California Native Plant Society is concerned that
nonvascular plants (cryptograms) such as lichens, algae, fungi,
mosses, and liverworts are not usually considered as a
biological resource by resource agencies or other lead agencies
in California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) or General Plan
Law documents.
By their ubiquity, abundance, and diversity, nonvascular
plants are an important component of the California flora. Many
occupy habitats inhospitable to vascular plants and may be the
only plant organisms that occupy certain sites.
These plants, macro- and microscopic, are critical and
essential within the integrated ecosystems. They provide
habitat, forage, and refuge for terrestrial and aquatic
vertebrates and invertebrates. They modify soil or rock
substrate which may allow other plants to attach and grow,
thereby increasing the potential diversity of habitat. They
reduce organic material and enhance uptake of nutrients by other
plants, perhaps serving as symbionts, and fix nitrogen that
becomes available to other organisms.
Nonvascular plants have been reduced in number, diversity,
abundance, and range (as many species in natural areas) by the
reduction in habitat area. Aquatic (freshwater and marine) and
terrestrial (desert, forest, grassland, scrub, chaparral, and
woodland) systems have all been affected to some extent by human
activity and all contain nonvascular plants. Some groups of
nonvascular plants can be used to indicate the environmental
health of an area. Population changes of some species may be
valuable for measuring the effects of human activities on the
environment. For example, the loss of lichens may indicate
increased air pollutants. The loss of mosses may suggest a
decrease in soil moisture. A change in the relative abundance of
algae may indicate chemical or temperature changes of water.
With these thoughts in mind, the CNPS makes the following
policy statement concerning nonvascular plants.
- WHEREAS nonvascular plants are valid taxonomic entities
and are an important component of the flora of California;
and
- WHEREAS nonvascular plants provide valuable biological
functions, such as: providing habitat for invertebrates,
providing forage for terrestrial wildlife and birds, and
reducing soil or rock substrates to sand or silt sized
particles to create soils; and
- WHEREAS nonvascular plants of all types have been reduced
from historic extent and are being lost or adversely
impacted at a rapid rate throughout California; and
- WHEREAS rare nonvascular plants have not been provided
legal protection by listing as threatened or endangered
under the federal or state Endangered Species Acts; and
- WHEREAS nonvascular plants can be important indicators of
the health of the environment; and
- WHEREAS nonvascular plants add to the biodiversity of the
natural environment
The California Native Plant Society:
- HEREBY supports all efforts to preserve and conserve
native nonvascular plants of all types; and
- HEREBY opposes projects that adversely affect the
continued viability of native nonvascular plants of any type
unless appropriate mitigation is provided to compensate,
in-kind, for losses of native nonvascular plants prior to
project impacts; and
- HEREBY recommends avoidance of impacts to native
nonvascular plants; and
- HEREBY urges full enforcement of all laws and regulations
concerning nonvascular plants that are consistent with CNPS
policies and purposes; and
- HEREBY supports and recommends listing of rare nonvascular
plants as threatened or endangered under the federal and
state Endangered Species Acts as appropriate; and HEREBY
supports and recommends state and local government adoption
of policies and ordinances to protect and conserve all types
of native nonvascular plants and communities; and
- HEREBY recommends that all CEQA and General Plan Law
documents address impacts to native nonvascular plants and
communities for projects that may adversely affect them.
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