Paleontological Resources: Fossils and CEQA

Yes, through the Appendix G checklist rather than through the statute. Appendix G asks whether the project would directly or indirectly destroy a unique paleontological resource or site or a unique geologic feature. Note that the 2018 Guidelines update moved that question out of Cultural Resources and into Geology and Soils, so a report that files paleontology under cultural resources is citing a superseded version of the checklist.

Public Resources Code 21083.2 does not mention paleontological resources, though a great deal of published material cites it as though it does. It deals only with archaeological resources. The phrase “unique paleontological resource” appears in Appendix G and has no statutory definition anywhere in CEQA. Any report citing 21083.2 for a paleontological threshold is citing the wrong statute.

On public lands, Public Resources Code 5097.5 makes it a misdemeanor to knowingly excavate, remove, destroy, injure, or deface an archaeological or vertebrate paleontological site, including fossilized footprints, or any other archaeological, paleontological, or historical feature, without express permission from the agency with jurisdiction. That catch-all matters, because it brings invertebrate and plant fossil localities in as well. The real limit is jurisdictional. The section applies to public lands, meaning land owned by or under the jurisdiction of the state or of any city, county, district, authority, or public corporation. Penalties run to a $10,000 fine, a year in county jail, or both.

Sensitivity is determined from the geology, not from a walkover. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s 2010 standard procedures are the de facto professional standard in California, and they rank the sedimentary units underlying a site as high potential, undetermined, low, or no potential. High potential covers sedimentary and volcaniclastic units that have previously produced fossils or have the right depositional characteristics, such as fine-grained fluvial sandstones, paleosols, and marine deposits. Undetermined means there is not enough information and a field survey by a qualified paleontologist is needed. High-grade metamorphic and plutonic igneous rocks have no potential.

Under the SVP standard, resources must predate the middle Holocene, roughly 5,000 years, to be considered significant. The standard also sets monitoring expectations: 100 percent monitoring in high-potential units initially, with reduction permissible after 50 percent of excavation produces no fossils.

Caltrans uses its own three-tier ranking and a document sequence of Paleontological Identification Report, Paleontological Evaluation Report, and Paleontological Mitigation Plan, described in Standard Environmental Reference Volume 1, Chapter 8.

A Paleontological Resources Impact Mitigation Program is the work plan for a project with paleontological sensitivity. It covers pre-excavation surface survey and salvage, monitoring during earth-moving, macrofossil and microfossil recovery including screen-washing, preparation and consolidation of specimens, identification and cataloging by specialists, curation in an approved not-for-profit repository, and reporting.

The item that catches projects out is curation. A repository agreement has to be in place before ground disturbance. Museums have their own review processes, acceptance criteria, and per-specimen fees, and they are not obligated to take your material, so this is a contracting task on the critical path that teams tend to find late.

No. The Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualification Standards cover five disciplines: archeology, history, architectural history, architecture, and historic architecture. Paleontology is not among them, and neither is ethnography.

Paleontological qualifications come from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s standard and from agency-specific requirements, including Caltrans, the Bureau of Land Management, and county guidelines such as San Diego County’s. A scope of work or a proposal claiming an “SOI-qualified paleontologist” is describing a credential that does not exist, which is a reasonable signal to look more closely at the rest of the document.