The Legislature hereby finds and declares that the Ventura-Los Angeles Mountain and Coastal Zone, defined in Section 22012, as the last large undeveloped area contiguous to the shoreline within the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Region, comprised of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, represents a unique and irreplaceable natural resource to the people of the state, that uses of the zone include recreation, conservation, open space, and utilization and enjoyment of the sea and the mountains, that the zone functions as an integral component of the physical and biological systems of the entire region, and to a significant, although not as yet precisely determined degree, impacts upon these essential life-support systems, that there are pressures of population growth and economic development in the zone, and that if conservation and development practices are permitted to continue in their present unplanned, uncoordinated, and haphazard manner, irreversible deterioration of the zone as a precious natural resource for the people of the entire state may ensue.