Deal Closed to Keep Vast Lands Wild Conservation: 240,000 Acres of Tejon Ranch to Remain Undeveloped.

By Jerry Berrios

LEBEC — Some 240,000 acres of historic Tejon Ranch will be protected from development in a landmark deal announced Thursday between major environmental groups and the property’s owner.

In exchange for the conservation effort, the environmental groups — including the Sierra Club and Audubon California — will not oppose three planned developments on the ranch. Thousands of new homes and an industrial complex are envisioned in those developments.

“This agreement is the Mount Everest of conservation in California,” said Joel Reynolds, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Southern California Program.

“Tejon Ranch is a crossroads of biodiversity, a Garden of Eden unparalleled in California.”

After roughly two years of negotiations, the agreement was finalized two days ago, Reynolds said.

The 270,000 acres of Tejon Ranch, largest swath of privately owned wildland in California, stretch through four major ecological regions: the Sierra Nevada, Mojave Desert, Coastal Range and San Joaquin Valley.

“California is blessed by natural beauty, and it is supremely blessed on Tejon Ranch,” said Bill Corcoran, senior regional representative for the Sierra Club.

“Tejon Ranch is California as it was and in special places still is: wild and achingly beautiful.”

Among other rare plants and animals, one of the world’s rarest, the federally protected California condor, makes its home on the ranch. Per the agreement, development was scaled back on certain ridgelines to help preserve condor habitat.

The agreement creates an independent nonprofit conservancy, which will oversee conservation easements, restore and enhance the preserved land and manage public access.

The conservancy has three years to purchase the development rights from 62,000 acres in five future development areas. Tejon Ranch would receive fair market value for that property.

A 12-member board will run the conservancy: four Tejon Ranch Co. appointees, four officials from environmental groups and four members jointly appointed by the environmental groups and Tejon Ranch.

Tejon Ranch will give $800,000 annually to the conservancy for the first seven years. The company could continue funding the conservancy at the same level for seven more years if the 62,000 acres are purchased.

The conservancy also can solicit federal, state and private money. Fees from the ranch’s future residential development, estimated at a minimum of $8million annually, will also be dedicated to the conservancy.

Graham Chisholm, director of conservation for Audubon California, will be the group’s chairman.

“The ranch is such an important place,” Chisholm said. “This has been at the top of the list for environmentalists in California.”

If the agreement hadn’t come together, Chisholm said he envisioned at least 50 years of litigation regarding planned development on the ranch.

“This could have been the fight of a lifetime,” he said.

The agreement allows for public access to the ranch, and the conservancy will work with state officials on a future state park.

Tejon Ranch would dedicate 10,000 acres to move a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Antelope Valley floor to a new 37-mile alignment through the ranch. Docent-led tours of the conserved land also will be held under the agreement.

The ranch now allows grazing, hunting and filming, but those activities would be subject to a management plan developed by the conservancy.

Future expansion of farming, oil drilling and sand-gravel mining would be allowed in strictly defined areas.

The development allowed on the ranch would all occur on the western edge along Interstate 5, said Andrew Daymude, vice president of land planning for Tejon Ranch Co.

The Centennial project, located within Los Angeles County, would have 23,000 units, including single-family homes, apartments, condos and town houses clustered in seven villages and 15million square feet of commercial, retail, office and business space.

Tejon Mountain Village, situated in Kern County, is planned as a high- end development with 3,450 units, including single-family homes, condos and hotel rooms. That project would encompass 23,000 acres of open space and 5,000 acres of developed land, Daymude said.

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