A. The preservation of protected native plants and native plant communities:
1. Promotes a sense of place and enhances community appearance;
2. Helps maintain a region's identity, which contributes to economic development by attracting tourism, new businesses, and business expansions;
3. Promotes and sustains property values, improves and helps maintain the quality of life, and supports life-styles which the community values and enjoys;
4. Contributes to the stabilization of desert soils, decreases erosion, and maintains original features of habitats that are important to native wildlife species;
5. Promotes water conservation by retaining established, existing drought-tolerant vegetation that requires no supplemental irrigation and minimal maintenance after establishment, and assists in climate modification to reduce energy costs;
6. Contributes to the reduction of nonnative plant allergens and the improvement of air quality by not requiring the preservation of nonnative allergen producing plants.
B. Native plants and native plant communities can be preserved by the following methods:
1. The preservation-in-place and set-aside of existing native plants and native plant communities;
2. The transplanting of native plants existing on-site to a new location on-site or the transplanting of existing native plants from an adjacent lot to a location on-site.
3. The mitigation of plants destroyed or removed from the site.
C. The most effective methods for preserving protected native plants are the set-aside of native plant communities and the preservation-in-place of individual protected native plants. Both methods minimize the disturbance of existing native plants, their understory plantings and animal habitats; and maximizes the preservation and beneficial effects of existing native plants and native plant communities. Transplanting and mitigation methods are progressively less effective but have merit. Transplanting and mitigation methods may be used in combination with the preservation in-place and set-aside methods.
(Ord. 1998-39 § 1 (part), 1998)