SACRAMENTO - The state Wildlife Conservation Board on Thursday approved funding for nearly $2 million of wildlife acquisition and environmental restoration projects in the North Coast region.

"This will be good not only for the brown pelican, snowy plover and peregrine falcon, but also for generations and generations of Californians," said Assemblywoman Patty Berg, D-Eureka.

"The purchase of the Table Bluff property is an important acquisition that will connect the Eel River Estuary with the South Spit for the first time," said Chesbro at the Wildlife Conservation Board meeting today in Sacramento. "This will create a corridor for wildlife and public access."

Allocating bond funds, the board voted to spend $1.025 million for the acquisition of a six-acre parcel known as the Lighthouse Ranch Unit, a hilly, grass and cypress covered parcel 12 miles south of Eureka. The land is peppered with storage buildings and a 70-foot-high water tower, but, despite its name, has not been home to a lighthouse since the 1970s. The current property owners will sell the land into trust for $1.5 million -- $500,000 of which will come from the State Coastal Conservancy.

Board members also agreed to dedicate $893,000 for the preservation and restoration of fish and wildlife habitat in the Upper Mattole River Watershed. Since 1988, the Conservation Board has acquired 2,722 acres of property in the watershed, which had been degraded after nearly a century of logging.

Another $1,000 was allocated to handle the documentation surrounding the no-cost transfer of four acres of the Eureka Slough Wildlife Area from the state to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Chesbro and Berg are both Legislative appointees to the Wildlife Conservation Board.