The Nipomo Action Committee and the San Luis Obispo chapter of the California Native Plant Society filed another lawsuit against Dana Reserve developer Nick Tompkins and the San Luis Obispo Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) over the potential discovery of a new manzanita plant on the Nipomo Mesa.
Bill Waycott with the California Native Plant Society told the Sun that he first discovered this new species of manzanita on the Nipomo Mesa while out on a hike with his wife in 2021.
“We found a particular plant that looked very different, and I wasn’t willing to just leave it alone. I told my wife that we have to try and figure out what’s going on here,” he said. “So, from there, we took cuttings, and we were able to create roots through propagation, … and we started showing them to the experts of this particular lineage.”
Those experts stationed at San Francisco State University and UC Riverside agreed with Waycott that this might be a new species, and thus he began his study of the situation.
Waycott said he looked at the morphological characteristics, such as the leaves, stems, fruits, and flowers, as well as took DNA extraction to help pursue the level of diversity in this new species versus other manzanita plants.
“This initial work was done in 2022 to 2023, and then the DNA was extracted at the end of 2023 into 2024, and then we had the results in front of ourselves in June of 2024. So, it really only came to light in June of 2024, and the Dana Reserve process was already well on its way,” he said. “The Board of Supervisors had already decided to approve the project, and we didn’t know if we had a new species during those deliberations or not, so we didn’t say anything.”
However, shortly after the Board of Supervisors approved the 1,370 residential unit housing development during a two-day meeting on April 23 and 24, Waycott said the documentation of this new species was beginning.
“We had to write the academic paper, then the academic paper had to be peer-reviewed and that took six months,” he said. “During that process, I approached the LAFCO commission and told them that we were certain that we had a new species and that it would directly impact the decisions regarding the environmental impact review. They didn’t agree with me or my team, and through that process the Nipomo Action Committee and the California Native Plant Society joined forces to join in a lawsuit challenging their decision.”
LAFCO Executive Officer Rob Fitzroy didn’t provide a comment on the lawsuit, which was filed on Dec. 13, but instead directed the Sun to a recording of the Nov. 14 LAFCO meeting where staff member Emily Creel addressed the topic of this possible newly discovered manzanita.
Creel said staff received a letter from a representative of the San Luis Obispo chapter of the California Native Plant Society claiming that there was a report that did morphological and DNA molecular testing on these new manzanita plants that exist within the Dana Reserve property. But Creel said she had some issues with the report.
“It’s very preliminary. The report, I’m not going to call it a report, the comment letter references a report that’s not even available because it hasn’t been published. It hasn’t been peer-reviewed; the information hasn’t been weighed in on by any regulatory agencies, much less has the species been identified as new and listed on any regulatory agencies,” she said. “The comment letter is very speculative and preliminary in native and references this report, which is not even available.”
This lawsuit came a few months after the Nipomo Action Committee sued Tompkins and the SLO County Board of Supervisors with claims that the project would stress “local resources and burden local emergency services such as Cal Fire and the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff.”
Jocelyn Brennan, a representative of the Dana Reserve team, told the Sun that they don’t believe this new lawsuit will have any impact on development, as the project approvals already include mitigation measures for manzanita.
This article appears in Feb 6-16, 2025.