In one of many largest offers to guard open area within the Bay Space over the previous decade, an environmental group is buying a scenic redwood forest within the North Bay that may create a 7-mile-long unbroken chain of protected redwood parks and preserves from the mountains to the ocean.
The Save the Redwoods League, based mostly in San Francisco, has agreed to pay $24 million for the 1,517-acre property, situated 2 miles south of Guerneville close to the Russian River in Sonoma County.
The dimensions of 1,149 soccer fields, the rolling parcel consists of 20 miles of trails and greater than 3 miles of streams and grassy meadows with breathtaking views of the ocean. It has been owned since 1998 by Mendocino Redwood Firm, managed by the Fisher household, homeowners of the Hole, Banana Republic and the Athletics baseball group.
“This is the missing puzzle piece in the whole landscape there,” mentioned Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League. “There are open pastures and meadows that look out across to the coastline. There are views to the mouth of the Russian River to the west and Mount Saint Helena to the east. The views are spectacular.”
Below the deal, scheduled to shut in Could, the lands can be added to Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park and opened to the general public by the tip of this summer season, mentioned Bert Whitaker, director of Sonoma County Regional Parks.
“This is a big deal,” he mentioned. “We have worked to preserve this area for 25 years. It’s just a really special place. It’s a huge part of larger connectivity for wildlife.”
The acquisition connects Sonoma Coast State Park to Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park and the Bohemian Grove, a 2,700-acre personal campground south of Guerneville that has been owned since 1878 by a personal males’s membership, the Bohemian Membership.
Yearly the membership has a tenting retreat on the grove below tight safety. The membership’s members up to now have included presidents, from Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, captains of business similar to David Packard, Joseph Coors and William Randolph Hearst, and different distinguished individuals, together with author Jack London, atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Grateful Useless guitarist Bob Weir and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Along with offering a protected hyperlink for wildlife, the brand new acquisition, generally known as the Monte Rio Growth property, additionally provides the potential to create a brand new community of public mountaineering trails from Monte Rio park to the Sonoma Coast, Whitaker mentioned.
The property has been logged on and off for the reason that 1800s.
There are a couple of old-growth redwood bushes, together with one historical tree 14 toes extensive with a pure tunnel by means of its base. However most are second-and-third progress bushes, blended in with Douglas fir and different species, Hodder mentioned. The final logging operation there occurred in 2022 when Mendocino Redwood Firm selectively minimize 319 acres.
Mendocino Redwood Firm, based mostly in Ukiah, already has expanded parks within the space. The corporate offered the adjoining 3,400 acres of redwood forest in 2005, a property known as Willow Creek, to the California Division of Parks and Recreation. It was added to Sonoma Coast State Park.
“We were approached by Save the Redwoods League on this, and they made a good case for the benefits of adding these forest lands to what was already created in 2005,” mentioned Mendocino Redwood Firm President Bob Mertz. “We were able to work through it together.”
The property is house to a lot of threatened and endangered species, together with the noticed owl, California big salamander and yellow-legged frog.
Of the $24 million buy worth, $6 million will come from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Area District, an area authorities company, and $4 million is predicted to return from the Sonoma Land Belief, a non-profit environmental group.
The remainder, Hodder mentioned, can be raised in personal donations and authorities grants by Save the Redwoods League. He famous that California voters in November accepted Proposition 4, a $10 billion state bond act to fund forest and parkland preservation, fireplace security initiatives and local weather change work, and that the league can be making use of to the state for a few of that cash.
Save the Redwoods League, based in 1918, has protected greater than 220,000 acres of redwood and sequoia forests during the last century. By shopping for land and improvement rights from prepared sellers, it has expanded 66 state, nationwide and native parks round California, together with Redwood Nationwide Park and Sequoia-Kings Canyon Nationwide Park, together with Massive Basin, Calaveras Massive Bushes, Del Norte, Emerald Bay, Grizzly Creek, Año Nuevo, Henry Cowell, Prairie Creek, Pfeiffer Massive Sur, Jedediah Smith and different landmark state parks.
Final September, the group closed a $15 million deal to buy 1,624 acres of redwoods and picturesque coastal meadows adjoining to what’s now Fort Ross State Historic Park, 12 miles north of Sonoma Coast State Park, increasing the protected lands round Fort Ross by 50%.
In 2021, the group spent $36.9 million to purchase 5 miles of rugged oceanfront land on the Mendocino Coast, totaling 3,181 acres, on the southern finish of the “Lost Coast” between Rockport and Ferndale. Final month, it transferred that property to the Bureau of Land Administration for public recreation.
Whitaker mentioned the general public will get pleasure from the brand new Monte Rio property when it opens this summer season.
“You are surrounded by an expansive, beautiful forested area,” he mentioned. “You come across amazing meadows. In the morning, the fog comes in, and it feels like you are on top of the world. It’s a classic Northern California landscape.”
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