Bren’s Land Gift Preserves a ‘Treasure Trove of Biodiversity’

11/30/01   |   Los Angeles Times

Land-Gift Celebration as Big as All Outdoors
Open space: Officials, environmentalists and scientists
all hail the Irvine Co.’s decision.

Rugged canyons, centuries-old oak trees, and sweeping expanses of Chaparral and sage make up the 11,000 acres that Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren is preserving forever. It includes some of the most sensitive and biologically rich land in Southern California.

“It’s a treasure trove of biodiversity,” said Tom Scott, a natural-resources specialist with the University of California. Local elected officials, environmentalists and scientists are still celebrating Bren’s Wednesday announcement, which ensures that more than half of the 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch will remain undeveloped.

E-mails were flowing as word spread outside the state.

“Yee haw! That is fantastic news. It made my day,” wrote Paul Beier, a mountain lion expert at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, in an e-mail to local environmentalist Claire Schlotterbeck.

news_map_112901_boeck1The land is home to scores of rare indigenous species, from mountain lions to Tecate cypress trees. Environmentalists have coveted it for years.

The preserved land includes a 17-square-mile swath in the northern part of the ranch. The swath stretches from Weir Canyon to Cleveland National Forest, and includes Fremont and Blind canyons and parts of Gypsum, Silverado, Santiago and Baker canyons. Expanses of grasslands, oak groves and other vegetation are studded with striking ridgelines and unusual rock formations.

Bren also preserved the “missing link” in Laguna Laurel, a 173-acre Parcel that links Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Crystal Cove State Park and permanent open space in Irvine. The land is part of one of the last undeveloped coastal canyons in Southern California.

This parcel, valued at $33 million 12 years ago, has been sought by preservationists since the late 1980s. Phone calls have been pouring into the Laguna Canyon Foundation, a nonprofit organization created in 1991 to preserve and enhance Laguna Canyon and the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, since Bren’s announcement at an invitation-only gathering Wednesday night.

news_map_112901_boeck21“We’ve had a lot of well-wishers congratulating us and they’re just so thrilled,” said a receptionist. “It’s been a very joyous day, very joyous.”

The North Ranch and Laguna Canyon parcels will be protected through permanent conservation easements that will be donated to the Nature Conservancy. Over the next decade, ownership of the land will be transferred to cities, the county and nonprofit groups.

But in the meantime, scientists, planners and environmentalists will Formulate immediate and long-term plans for the land. The Laguna Canyon land, for example, has been used for cattle grazing and needs restoration. Much of the land is currently off-limits to recreational users. But public access–which will vary from docent-led tours to picnicking, hiking and camping–could begin in some areas in less than two years.

The Irvine Co.–the largest landowner in Orange County–had extremely valuable development rights to build on some of the land, but company officials declined to comment on details.

On the Laguna Canyon parcel alone, the company could have built 1,500 homes The open space plan also apparently reduces the size of proposed Developments in East Orange and next to Anaheim, though details on how much are unavailable. The company has preliminary approvals to build nearly 20,000 homes on these two parcels but is expected to build far fewer.

news_map_112901_boeck3The company’s plans for a large triangular pocket of unincorporated County land known as the North Ranch Policy Area were unknown until Wednesday, when Bren announced it would be preserved.

Several possible sites where the county was considering building a jail–including two east of Orange–are now off-limits, thrilling city officials–and creating a buzz Thursday in county offices about the loss of the potential jail sites.

Activists also believe the preservation may kill a proposal to build a Road through the Cleveland National Forest to connect Orange and Riverside counties.

“It leverages protection of even more land,” said environmentalist Schlotterbeck, long a critic of Irvine Co. policy. “It was a smart thing to do and a wise thing to do. I am grateful.”

SEEMA MEHTA, TIMES STAFF WRITER

Finding Middle Ground

07/18/96   |   Los Angeles Times

IRVINE —  An unprecedented experiment in wildlife conservation began Wednesday in an Orange County meadow, as a major land developer and high-level government officials signed a plan that some predict will be a national model for protecting both economic interests and rare plants and animals.

Amid applause, the officials signed an agreement that creates a 37,000-acre wildlife preserve in the county’s central and coastal areas. Designed to shield nearly 40 troubled species from extinction, the deal also grants landowners new assurances when they build outside the preserve’s boundaries.

At a time when the federal Endangered Species Act is under attack by developers and property rights groups, the Orange County plan is being heralded as a way to avoid collisions between builders and government regulators over the act’s restrictions on private land. It was born out of conflicts over the California gnatcatcher, the rare songbird that dwells in coastal sage scrub on some of the nation’s most expensive real estate.

“I am awed by the complex and delicate process that brought so many different interests together,” said Irvine Co. Chairman Donald L. Bren, whose company is committing nearly 21,000 acres of land for the preserve. “I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of this achievement.”

Along with Bren, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and state Resources Agency Secretary Douglas P. Wheeler were key players in crafting the landmark pact. All three men spoke to a crowd of nearly 200 at Wednesday’s dedication ceremony in Shady Canyon, against a backdrop of pastures and hills turned brown by the summer sun.

The audience included some unlikely allies who helped negotiate the plan: representatives of the Democratic White House, the Republican administration in Sacramento, developers and environmental groups.

The Orange County preserve, approved unanimously in April by the Board of Supervisors, is the first major plan of its kind created under the Natural Community Conservation Planning program, written by Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration in 1991 in the hope of balancing business and environmental interests. Preserves similar to the one approved Wednesday are being planned for South County and San Diego County.

Babbitt, who flew to California for the ceremony, hailed the preserve’s creation as a new approach to conservation–one that has special resonance in fast-growing areas such as Orange County, where open land is quickly being overtaken by homes, malls and highways.

In an earlier era, conservationists reached out to protect “the back country, Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada, the California desert, all of the great wild spaces,” Babbitt said in an interview before the ceremony. “At the same time that we were protecting the faraway, we were ignoring the nearby. It was as if we were saying we could establish a balance with nature on the far horizon while ignoring our own neighborhood.”

By establishing preserves like the one in Orange County, Babbitt said, “we ought to be able to protect the values that make California so attractive–not in the abstract, 500 miles away, but outside the back door in the morning.”

Despite talk of the day’s historic importance, the atmosphere was decidedly casual, with several guests in jeans and Babbitt in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and khakis. Guests were given pale green baseball caps and posters with the slogan “Forever Wild.”

The new preserve, to be protected from development for at least 75 years, is nearly nine times larger than Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Stretching from Costa Mesa to San Juan Capistrano, it forms a patchwork of native habitat areas, such as the coastal sage scrub that is vital to the gnatcatcher’s survival.

Landowners who participate in the NCCP plan are to be freed from strict endangered-species laws on land outside the preserve, although they still must abide by other development regulations.

The preserve is designed to shield whole habitats, rather than individual plants and animals, its creators emphasize. That approach is considered essential to warding off extinction for the gnatcatcher and other rare animals and plants.

But some environmentalists are concerned that the plan has been oversold. Leeona Klippstein of Whittier, spokeswoman for the Spirit of the Sage Council, has contended that more gnatcatchers have been lost through recent development than the federal government acknowledges.

William L. Rukeyser, spokesman for the Sacramento-based California Biodiversity Alliance, cautioned Wednesday against assuming too quickly that the Orange County plan is a national model. Not until data are collected and analyzed, he said, will the preserve’s success be proven.

“What we don’t have yet is several years of real-life experience [to determine] does it work or doesn’t it. And that’s the bottom line,” Rukeyser said.

Some questioned why the ceremony was held in Shady Canyon, an area that lies partially outside the preserve, and where as many as 400 homes may be built. An Irvine Co. spokesman said the site was chosen because of its convenience for guests and because it offers a view of the preserve without intruding on the open space.

Others in the environmental community say the plan provides proof that the Endangered Species Act can survive even amid development pressures and the fragile natural habitats of Southern California.

Dan Silver, coordinator of the Los Angeles-based Endangered Habitats League, recalled the era of the “gnatcatcher wars,” in the early 1990s, when developers feared that federal protections for the tiny songbird could put the brakes on the local economy.

“The doomsayers were simply proven wrong,” Silver said. “The main message is that the Endangered Species Act works. It was flexible; it allowed people to reach consensus.”

Deborah Schoch, Los Angeles Times