State Route 58 Widening Project - Bakersfield Freeways

Chapter 4 Results: Biological Resources, Discussion of Impacts and Mitigation
to kit foxes associated with regular maintenance activities. The program is currently
being developed with USFWS and CDFG. The conceptual framework for the
program is described in Draft Thomas Roads Improvement Program Mitigation for
Cumulative Effects to San Joaquin Kit Fox, a working version of the third chapter of
the Implementation Plan (City of Bakersfield and Caltrans 2010). The program will
continue to be refined through an ongoing collaborative, consultation process among
Caltrans, City, USFWS, and CDFG. Caltrans and the City have taken necessary
actions to begin developing the program by participating in four meetings with
USFWS and CDFG on March 11, 2010, May 11, 2010, July 14, 2010, and August 18,
2010 and the City has begun evaluating ownership of sumps with potential to be
conserved as part of the program, calculated a preliminary estimate of anticipated
program costs, and collected information from the resource agencies that would be
required in a long-term management plan. Caltrans and the City have identified the
Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a non-profit land trust, to hold endowments necessary
to fully fund the Sump Habitat Program and conservation easement oversight.
• SJKF – 13 Implement the Sump Habitat Program
The final approved version of the Sump Habitat Program will be implemented within
one year of the approval of the Final Environmental Document (FED) for the last of
the six TRIP projects.
4.1.1.6. Cumulative Effects (FESA)
The action area for the cumulative effects analysis is the TRIP program area analyzed
in the Implementation Plan (City and Caltrans 2010), which includes the BSAs for the
six proposed TRIP projects.
The proposed project is one of the ten TRIP projects. The cumulative effects of all ten
TRIP projects include loss of kit fox habitat and kit fox dens, habitat fragmentation,
and degradation, change in habitat use patterns, geographic isolation, change of
movement patterns, and an increase in mortality associated with an unintentional
increase in vehicle strike. Roadway expansion could bisect safe movement corridors,
reducing the probability that kit foxes could safely move from one area of suitable
habitat to another in search of denning and foraging habitat. Patches of undeveloped
kit fox habitat, which are already highly fragmented in Bakersfield, could be
sufficiently degraded by construction of new and expanded roadways that they would
no longer function as suitable habitat. Habitat fragmentation and degradation could
force kit foxes to use different areas for movement, denning and foraging, which
42 State Route 58 Widening Project Biological Assessment