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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

October 30, 2003

Preserving open spaces

Wildlife habitat focus of push for protected land

Metaphorically, that view sums up the greater Bay Area's open-space situation. In the foreground, we've got parks and other types of protected preserves that swath Bay Area towns -- a million-acre greenbelt presenting habitat for wildlife, agricultural preserves and recreational resources. But beyond that heaves a turbulent, uncertain future for thousands of other acres that might or might not ever getany protection.

If the conference attendees -- representing 50 open-space groups of various stripes -- can pull it off, a way will be found to add still more green acres to the nine Bay Area counties. Perhaps, even double them. "One million acres to go," was a conference theme.

"The Bay Area should add 11,500 acres of accessible open space per year to keep our current ratio of protected land to an expanding human population," said John Woodbury, director of the council (BAOSC) for the last decade.

"That's a daunting task," Woodbury admitted. "But unless it's undertaken, and we emphasize building links between preserves, we'll just wind up with a series of isolated islands, which won't make effective wildlife habitat.

"Most of the Bay Area is privately owned, and always will be," Woodbury said. "So, our future solution has to include more conservation easements with landowners. For that to work, we must spread the idea of stewardship. We need to forge bonds with local farmers. We need to connect parks with restored, urban creek corridors. And we need scientific analysis of upland areas, to see what ought to be acquired there."

The goals sound ambitious. A similar vision generated our first million acres of open space, conferring the quality-of-life our Bay Area enjoys. Open- space protection gives us uncluttered vistas, clean watersheds, groves where deer, owls and bobcats can co-exist as neighbors.

And, after open space is transferred to control of appropriate public agencies, it also can include trails, campgrounds and other recreational resources.

The history of Bay Area open-space preservation was launched in 1872, when San Jose founded California's first city park. Then, in 1905, William Kent bought the soaring redwood groves of Muir Woods on the flanks of Mount Tamalpais. A few years later, Kent turned it over to the federal government as a national monument.

Another local model of open-space activism provided a sign of hope amid the Depression. East Bay citizens formed the East Bay Regional Parks District. They agreed to a property tax that today supports a well-funded, 94,500-acre, 59-unit system (an arrangement that makes it the envy of many other land agencies).

The Trust for Public Land formed to thwart development on the Marin County headlands in 1972 by buying the site, then transferring title to the National Park Service. Today, TPL has extended its reach to more than 1.6 million acres in 45 states. Its headquarters remain in San Francisco.

Another model is the Greenbelt Alliance, which exists primarily to educate communities and agitate for open space. It also runs outreach programs,

principally through a large, ongoing series of guided outings and hikes to sites that have been saved, and still more deemed worthy of attention.

The 50 Bay Area open-space entities not only have varied missions and characters, they also range from large to small. Some are devoted to preserving farms and ranches (Marin Agricultural Land Trust), some to preserving wildlife zones and parkland (Peninsula Open Space Trust). Others nurture public access (Sonoma County's LandPaths).

All now must function in an economic, political and social environment undergoing swift and severe change. Their old, inspiration -- buying threatened land, then passing control of the acreage to a state or federal park agency -- doesn't work as well as before. Many public agencies not only lack funds to make reimbursement for the purchase price, they are so severely cut back in staffing and operations budgets, they're incapable of taking on new holdings.

That has stimulated fresh approaches. One is the idea of building a statewide umbrella organization to coordinate policy. Another is blending the work of open-space nonprofit groups with local government to create new public parks departments; this is currently gaining traction in Napa and Solano counties.

In some cases, an open-space group must make peace with the idea of being a long-term land manager itself. In the Martinez area, the Muir Heritage Land Trust has saved 1,200 acres, but plans to retain fee title to 660 acres. Here it will continue agriculture, forge links between wildlife habitats, and maintain public access to segments of the Bay Area Ridge Trail.

However, it looks like the future's biggest theme will be nurturing public/private land stewardship through conservation easements. Such legal agreements, which place development restrictions and habitat protections on private land titles, have saved 14 percent of the current 1,000,000 open-space acres.

Easements were responsible for at least 50 percent of the protected zones added to the Bay Area in the 1990s. That proportion is expected to rise in decades to come.

"The attraction to landowners is, they retain possession and primary use of the property. And they can support wildlife and open space, while gaining considerable property and estate tax benefits,'' says Darla Guenzler, associate director of BAOSC. "About a third of easements include a public- access provision."

Guenzler says easements are a fairly new open-space tool. The best language and right techniques for applying them are still being perfected. Needs for monitoring, and cooperative-habitat restoration programs, are areas of concern.

The biggest potential problem is keeping these supposedly unbreakable agreements intact after a new landowner comes on the scene. She says there are about two-dozen cases across the nation where suits have been brought to make landowners adhere to terms of the easement agreements on their land titles.

An outstanding Bay Area example of this is the McCrae Ranch on Sonoma Mountain. The previous owner, Tom McCrae, had been paid $1.2 million in 1997 for a signed conservation agreement with the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, and also had agreed to public access -- via a Bay Area Ridge Trail route -- with LandPaths.

Then, in 2001, McCrae sold the ranch for a rumored $2 million to new owners whose identities were shielded by an entity dubbed the Maria Hansen Trust. These new owners immediately sought to adjust terms of the conservation agreement, and demanded wholesale cancellation of public access. After negotiation proved fruitless, Sonoma County launched a lawsuit this year in Superior Court to enforce terms of the original agreements.

Open-space groups are avidly focused on the outcome.
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Open-space information

Organizations that nurture public access via tours, volunteer work parties and/or trail systems on open-space preserves include:

-- Greenbelt Alliance, (415) 255-3233 (sic, the correct phone number is 543-6771), www.greenbelt.org

-- LandPaths, (707) 544-7284, www.landpaths.org

-- Marin County Open Space District, (415) 499-6387, www.marinopenspace. org

-- Midpeninsula Open Space District, (650) 691-0485,www.openspace.org

-- East Bay Regional Parks District, (510) 562-7275, www.ebparks.org.

-- Muir Heritage Land Trust, (925) 228-5460, www.muirheritagelandtrust

-- Land Trust of Napa County, (707) 252-3270, napalandtrust.org

-- Bay Area Ridge Trail, (415) 561-2595, www.ridgetrail.org

Links to other open-space groups and general information about more local programs can be found at the Bay Area Open Space Council's Web site, www. openspacecouncil.org.

E-mail Paul McHugh at pmchugh@sfchronicle.com.

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