More than 24,000 acres along the Gaviota Coast will be permanently kept safe from development thanks to a $15 million conservation easement between the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, The Nature Conservancy, and Vandenberg Space Force Base.
“The 24,000 acres we are talking about here are a globally important biodiversity hot spot and a culturally important, sacred place for people living in this area for 10,000 years,” said Meredith Hendricks, the executive director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County.
Conservationists and scientists have been working to preserve this land, now known as the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve, just south of Vandenberg since the early 2000s, Hendricks said. The Land Trust and Nature Conservancy initially tried to preserve the land in 2005, but its owner, Bixby Corporation, instead sold it to a private buyer who subdivided the land into 64 lots for home development.
In 2017, the Nature Conservancy ended two-year negotiations with the new owners to buy the property for $165 million and transition the land into a nature preserve, Hendricks said. While the entities were thrilled, the purchase didn’t change the existing zoning and subdivision. However, this new easement gets rid of the zoning and unifies the land.
“It’s a legally binding contract that limits development potential of a property forever, agreed to by the land owner, but it stays with the land no matter who owns it,” Hendricks said. “The Land Trust will have a forever relationship with this place and [an] obligation that nothing happens related to subdivision or development.”
The $15 million comes from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) program, which preserves land around military bases to avoid land use conflicts near bases, she said.
“Vandenberg made all the difference, they provided 100 percent of the funding. Because The Nature Conservancy sold the easement at a discount, we get to count this for other deals around the base,” Hendricks said. “Not only is this a permanent conservation, but we get to explore more conservation opportunities around Vandenberg, which makes this deal more important.”
This is the “biggest deal” for the people who work in local conservation, she added, because the area has more than 600 species of animals, 6,000 acres of coast live oak woodlands, and 300 acres of wetlands.
“The California Coast is chopped up, and if you go north or south, right on the edge of the beach there’s a lot of development; there’s not a lot of places in California where you can have 24,000 acres for wildlife to roam,” Hendricks said.
The Nature Conservancy—a global conservation and research organization working in 70 different countries—owns the property, conducts research, and manages the land, said Mark Reynolds, the conservancy’s lead scientist and director for the Point Conception Research Institute at the preserve.
“One of the most exciting things about this as a new preserve is this part of the coastline is rich in history and significance for biodiversity and it’s never been available for study,” Reynolds said. “It’s honestly like we’ve discovered a new Channel Island, it’s that rich in discovery potential.”
The Point Conception Research Institute has worked with 40 other research institutions, conducted more than 100 research projects, and hosted more than 200 scientists, he said. Researchers have studied the role of predators having coastal access, the land’s freshwater systems and groundwater recharge, and the impact biodiversity has on climate resilience.
“We’re also working with NASA in pioneering state-of-the-art Earth observation to this landscape to understand drought, fire, and the role of invasive species in this ecosystem through a program using hyperspectral imagery to take a fine-scale look at vegetation in this region—which has never been done before,” Reynolds said.
The institute also wants to open its doors to other educational opportunities and has partnered with UC Santa Barbara for undergraduate and graduate programs, and the Lompoc Unified School District to host day programs in environmental education.
“We believe there’s an opportunity to provide education for the next environmental leaders,” Reynolds said. “The faculty and students have leaned into this and have done many grad student projects and class projects; it’s really exciting.”
This article appears in Nov 23 – Dec 3, 2023.