DAN HUBIG


WILLIAM L. RUKEYSER

This "photo opportunity," staged by Audubon Society chapters and
other advocates, helped the Peninsula Open Space Trust to buy Bair
Island. POST, however, had nothing to do with this event. The
Japanese banner reads: "Mr. Kumigai, help us to save our beautiful
San Francisco Bay."


ROBERT BUELTEMAN,
COURTESY SEMPERVIRENS FUND

This redwood forest along Gazos Creek in San Mateo County has been purchased by the Sempervirens Fund, to be added to Butano State Park. Habitat for endangered coho salmon and marbled murrelet is included in the two parcels, of 431 and 389 acres. This acreage will connect Butano Park with Año Nuevo State Reserve and the Peninsula Open Space Trust's coastal Cloverdale Ranch, and come within one-half mile of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. This is the largest purchase to date by the state's oldest land conservancy.

 JANET DIEHL

A REPORTER CALLED ME RECENTLY for background on a story about land trusts in California. "Is it true," he asked, "that the reason more and more land trusts are being formed these days is that government agencies are out of money, so if people want new parks, they have to do it themselves?"
Instinctively, I began to agree. I started rattling off the old line about "dwindling government funds" and "the increasing need for public/private partnerships." But before I got to "1,000 points of light," I stopped to think.
Yes, government agencies are low on funds these days, especially parks and wildlife protection agencies. By all means, we need land trusts to supplement our efforts. But is that really why new land trusts are springing up all over? If, suddenly, we agencies got a billion-dollar cash infusion, would there be no more new land trusts?
Of course not, and here's why: Land trusts have grown in number because the need for land protection has become so great and so widespread. Where 25 years ago there may have been 30 areas in California where people were feeling the pinch of urban and suburban growth strongly enough to organize and oppose it, now that pinch is being felt almost everywhere.
Growth that would have been hard to imagine a decade ago threatens the pleasant way of life in small oceanside towns like Gualala, quiet beach communities like Cambria, mountain retreats like Truckee, even "ordinary" towns like Livermore, Chino Hills, and Escondido. In all these places and many more, land trusts have risen to preserve as much as possible of what is dear to them--some greenery, some historic buildings, some stretches of the river or coast.
Change is racing through California so fast that only the people who live in a place can act quickly enough to "save" it. State and federal agencies--even funded at top dollar--can't possibly be everywhere at the right time.
That's what I ended up telling that reporter: There are more and more land trusts these days because there is more and more growth. People aren't willing to see their communities get gobbled up, so they organize. A land trust is a way they can protect land permanently, be it as open space, park, farmland, or wildlife preserve. By choosing projects strategically, land trusts can, to some extent, control their communities' growth.
What's changing in the land trust world is that the numbers are getting bigger. Bigger numbers of land trusts, bigger price tags on the properties in need of protection, bigger budgets to raise, and more competition for public funding. The good news is that most of the state's land trusts are rising to the challenge.

Reaching for the Sky in Martinez

Eight years ago, my colleagues and I stood in front of 15 or so excited but slightly apprehensive people who had given up their Saturday to be "trained" to become the Martinez Regional Land Trust. The Coastal Conservancy, working with the Trust for Public Land (TPL), has put on dozens of training workshops for fledgling land trusts. Some of these groups go on to do great things; some don't.
The Martinez Regional Land Trust did. Those same people whom we coerced into performing a few awkward "approach-the-landowner" role-plays in that stuffy room in 1989 are now talking with real landowners and making real deals--for sums totaling close to $700,000. They've hired an executive director and completed two land transactions, with a third acquisition under option. They're running an education program for local school kids. They've helped to create a community garden. And most important, they're setting higher and higher goals for themselves--and meeting them.
The Martinez land trust arose when a group of citizens came together a decade ago during a controversy about a large subdivision plan. They saw that major residential development was about to begin in their area and organized to defend their landscape of rolling hills, scenic ridgelines, orchards, and ranches. Their current project is their biggest challenge yet: they need $685,000 by June 1998 to buy the 242-acre Sky Ranch, atop Franklin Ridge. This purchase would provide a key connection in the Bay Area Ridge Trail and link larger, permanently protected, open spaces to the north and the south. "Sky Ranch is exactly the type of project we dreamed of doing when we first came together," said Nancy Schaefer, a founding member of the land trust. "The board has taken on a tremendous challenge, but the significance of Sky Ranch has attracted more volunteers and resources, so that we will be able to tackle even larger projects in the future." (See Raising Our Sights Toward the Hills.)

Big Risk, Big Payoff in Santa Barbara

Quadruple the numbers on Sky Ranch, and you've got the challenge that the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County recently met when it raised $3.2 million in less than three years to save 783 acres of the Sedgwick Ranch from development. The property was up for sale. If it went, the future of the entire 5,896-acre historic ranch would have been at risk.
"This is one of the most beautiful scenic areas of the central coast," said David Anderson, an attorney who is a board member of the land trust. "It includes the headwaters of two major streams and has been named by the Nature Conservancy as one of the eight top sites along the California coast in terms of species diversity."
The original owners, Duke and Alice Sedgwick, had bequeathed 5,113 acres to the University of California, the remainder to their five children. Their will made no provision for inheritance taxes, so in 1994 the children decided to sell their 783 acres.
The heirs' parcel was critically important to the university: it contains access to the land left to the university, the buildings and roads. Unless it acquired this parcel, the university estimated that it would have to spend $2 million or more to make use of its bequest--a sum it could not afford. The university began to consider selling its acreage.
Thus the future of the entire ranch was at stake and, with it, the future of the surrounding region. There was much support within the community and the university for preserving the ranch as a nature reserve. The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County decided to buy the Sedgwick children's land and donate the property to the university, on condition that the university immediately add its ranchlands to the University of California Natural Reserve System.
Was the land trust up to the challenge? It had a few acquisitions under its belt, true, but nothing approaching the scale of this one. "We had to agree to take on $1.5 million of debt to make the purchase, realizing that each of us might be held personally responsible for some of that." said Anderson. "We had a short option period and had to purchase the land before funds had been raised. Each board member had to consider: Are we willing to put our own personal finances on the line? It was a scary prospect, and it made everyone realize the importance of what we were getting into." Board members weighed the risk, accepted it, and achieved their goal.
"We were lucky," said Anderson. "We had a lot of talent, a superb grant writer, and we used all our contacts. There was tremendous community support. People held events that brought in $5 and $10 contributions that kept the fires going. People who couldn't donate volunteered at fundraising events. And every board member worked on fund raising."
Of the total $3.2 million raised, $2,236,500 was public money from the state: $800,000 from Proposition 70 funds, an equal amount from the Wildlife Conservation Board, $336,500 from the University of California, and $300,000 from the Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Program. Foundation grants, corporate gifts, and individual contributions made up the rest.
Saving the Sedgwick Ranch would have seemed an unattainable dream to the Santa Barbara County residents who gathered 15 years ago to try to preserve what they could of their landscape. What is now the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County grew out of two nonprofit organizations: the Santa Ynez Valley Land Trust in the northern, inland part of the county, which formed in an effort to protect agricultural land from development; and the Carpinteria Valley Land Trust to the south, which organized to save a coastal marsh (story in next issue of Coast & Ocean). They merged in 1985, in hopes of becoming a countywide force. And they've done just that.

The Coastal Conservancy
and Land Trusts

OF THE $180 MILLION THAT THE COASTAL Conservancy has spent in the past two decades on coastal protection projects, $40 million--more than one-fifth of the total--has gone directly to nonprofit organizations, especially local land trusts. By helping about 100 such groups to achieve their goals, the Conservancy has been able to carry out conservation work that benefits the general public, coastal agriculture, coastal industry, and wildlife.
With financial and technical help from the Conservancy, land trusts have preserved and restored natural habitat, opened public access to the shore, redesigned inappropriate subdivisions, renovated urban waterfronts, preserved coastal farmland, and acquired and held key sites that might otherwise have been lost to public use and enjoyment.
The Conservancy works closely with its partners, bringing both funds and technical assistance to projects it undertakes with them. If land is being purchased, the Conservancy can often help the land trust learn negotiating skills. If there are bureaucratic snags, it can help to undo them. It can also help a nonprofit group to keep good records and practice sound financial management techniques.
The Conservancy has helped to establish two regional councils of land trusts, which meet quarterly. The agency also offers workshops in its partners' communities, as well as publications of both general and specific interest. It also helps local groups to organize as land trusts.
To qualify for Conservancy assistance, local groups must be tax exempt under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3); their projects must be on the coast, in coastal watersheds, or on San Francisco Bay; and they must be in keeping with the Conservancy's specific goals.

For a copy of the Conservancy's enabling legislation, its nonprofit-oriented publications, or to get on our mailing list, please write: Janet Diehl, Nonprofit Program Manager, Coastal Conservancy, 1330 Broadway, 11th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612.

"We've now got a well-balanced board, with directors ranging from rural Santa Maria in the north to Carpinteria in the south, plus some from the 'big city' [Santa Barbara]," Anderson said. "The idea is that when a project comes up in any given area, we have a board member who lives there and who knows those people. We hope that makes us a known and trusted entity throughout the county. Or at least that we're equally distrusted throughout the county!" he added with a laugh.
What would cause distrust? Who would complain about citizens who buy up land at fair market price so as to leave it open, to everyone's benefit? Relations with the county planning department have been rough at times, Anderson said, and "negative advocacy" has come from conservative taxpayer associations that want to make sure property stays on tax rolls and from rural landowners who harbor a general distrust for environmental activists. For example, an effort by the Coastal Conservancy and the land trust to create a resource management plan for the Santa Ynez River watershed failed because of strong opposition from landowners suspicious of "management by outsiders." (See Coast & Ocean, Summer 1996.) In the soul-searching that followed, it was decided that perhaps the problem was that the land trust had moved too quickly, without first building a strong base of support among ranchers upstream as well as in more urbanized downstream communities.

Diversity and Controversy
in San Luis Obispo

As they have grown in size and importance, many land trusts have expanded and diversified both their capabilities and their activities. The 13-year-old Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo boasts a staff of four, an annual operating budget of $220,000, a flashy web site (www.slonet.org/vv/land _con), and an unusually diverse list of projects. Not only does it buy land and conservation easements, it also undertakes research, planning, and restoration projects. It raises about a fifth of its budget by providing consulting services.
Under contracts with the county and others, this land trust has mapped countywide development trends, drafted a Transfer of Development Credits (TDC) ordinance, and produced large-scale watershed management plans. Such undertakings have thrust it into controversy. Critics have charged that the TDC ordinances still allow landowners to develop--if not in one place, then in another; hence, a land trust that supports TDCs encourages development. The Land Conservancy's Fall 1996 newsletter noted: "Adopting the ordinance was not easy, and involved the Land Conservancy in more controversy than was desired. Only time will tell if the controversy was worth it."
Other projects generate only good feelings, however. Who could object to a creek cleanup? The land trust's 1996 Creek Day brought 700 people to pick up trash along San Luis Obispo Creek, the pride of downtown San Luis Obispo. The Land Conservancy's objective was to draw new people to the creek, then draw them into at least one of its other programs. Fifty people signed up that day to be regular inspectors of the creek's vital signs, under the land trust's monitoring program. Twenty sponsors and as many exhibitors supported the event.

Big and Small--Won for All?

Land trusts are growing in every state, but in California they have grown at twice the average national rate. Of at least 1,100 land trusts in the United States, 120 are in this state, two-thirds created within the past 15 years, according to a 1994 survey by the Land Trust Alliance. They range in size from the tiny all-volunteer Mill Creek Watershed Conservancy (see A Tiny but Tenacious Land Trust) to powerful regional organizations such as the Peninsula Open Space Trust (see POST Plays Cool And Fast For High Stakes) and the venerable Sempervirens Fund. The Trust for Public Land and the Nature Conservancy are national conservation organizations rather than local land trusts, and they too buy millions of dollars worth of land in California every year. Both these big organizations also foster the development of local land trusts.
The big training event of the year, though, is the Land Trust Rally, organized by the Land Trust Alliance to bring together delegates from land trusts across the country to learn from one another. Almost every year the gathering has grown. In 1996 more than 1,000 people attended the rally in Burlington, Vermont, and dozens more were turned away for lack of space. In September a similar number came together in Savannah, Georgia.
Almost always during these conferences, someone stands up to point to the glaring lack of ethnic diversity among those present. The land trust movement is predominantly white and middle to upper class, and this fact is reflected in the sea of white faces at the rally. Special sessions are held each year to discuss "social justice" and ways to diversify land trust membership. The next year the same discussions are held by the same people, with little change resulting.
This lack of ethnic diversity in the land trust movement reflects a demographic reality: Property-owning residents in beautiful places with open space around them are unlikely to be poor or members of minority groups. Land trust members point out, however, that the land they protect is for the benefit of all people--either indirectly, by providing a healthier environment with more wildlife habitat and productive farms, or directly by creating parks and trails that are open to all. And many land trusts make a special effort to invite people from poorer communities onto their properties, particularly schoolchildren from distressed districts. Some groups, like the Quail Ridge Wilderness Conservancy in Davis, work hard to reach as many population groups as possible. Its brochures come in English, Spanish, and Chinese.

"System Error?" What's That?

MANY LAND TRUSTS AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL organizations have invested heavily in e-mail, the Internet, fax-on-demand, and related electronic technology--only to continue as before to rely on the mail, telephone, travel, and deliveries.
This information was turned up in two surveys by the Telecommunications Cooperative Network (TCN), a member-owned communications technology cooperative. It prompted the W. Alton Jones Foundation, along with three other foundations, to sponsor a conference for selected groups to coax them into the electronic era. After the 1995 conference, organized by TCN and the Center for Strategic Communications, the Jones Foundation sponsored a "circuit rider"--a consultant dispatched among a group of allied advocacy organizations to help them improve their communications.
More information is available from the web sites of the Jones Foundation (www.wajones.org) and TCN (www.tcn.org). Both offer various consulting services, as well as links to the foundation's grantees and TCN's member organizations.

Pressing Palms in Marble Halls

The one issue that unites all land trusts--indeed, all nonprofit organizations--is the need for public funding. "Because land is so expensive in California, public money is almost always needed to supplement land trusts' private fundraising efforts," said Corey Brown, governmental affairs director for the Trust for Public Land's western region.
A close look at California land trusts' newsletters shows that a good chunk of their project money comes from the government--either from direct grants or from selling the property that they secure to a public agency. The most effective land trust folks, in fact, are just as familiar with the halls of Sacramento--and even Washington--as are the government officials they work with. After all, they need to make sure that there is public money to pay for at least some of the acreage they want to protect.
As private citizens, land trust members are ideally situated to give a small push to bills and bond acts that provide public money for land conservation. They just call up their legislators and ask them to support a particular funding bill, pointing out the benefits to their district. Because these folks live and vote in that district, their call is important to the elected official. And as long as their "attempts to influence legislation" are limited to an "insubstantial degree" of their overall work--and there are complicated formulas to tell you just what that means--land trusts are in compliance with Internal Revenue Service regulations for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit corporations.
When land trusts and public agencies agree on goals, it's "public/private partnership" at its best. Conflicts can arise, of course, as when land trust members push for money for a project that an agency doesn't find particularly compelling. But that's democracy.
For the agencies, working with land trusts is worth the occasional disagreement over priorities. Bair Island, a 1,600-acre wetland on San Francisco Bay, is a good example. Federal and state resource agencies had hoped for years to buy this property, but when the opportunity finally came, only the savvy Peninsula Open Space Trust could act quickly enough to give the landowners what they needed--money, at the right moment. (See POST Plays Cool and Fast for High Stakes.)
"California has one of the most sophisticated, most well-organized, and most effective land trust communities in the nation," said Corey Brown, who often rallies land trusts to promote bills that would provide money for land conservation. Even so, California's land trusts have not scored a major collective victory for land conservation funding in many a year.
Between 1976 and 1988, over $1 billion in bonds was allocated for acquisition and restoration of state and local parks and scenic and environmentally sensitive properties. It's been a drought since then. The last statewide bond act that gave government agencies--and, indirectly, their land trust partners--money for buying land was Proposition 117, passed seven years ago. That ballot measure banned trophy hunting of mountain lions and established a $30 million annual Habitat Conservation Fund, but created no new funding sources; it just rearranged existing funds. So far, the act has preserved 150,000 acres state-wide, many of which were included in land trust projects.
Government parks and wildlife agencies have seen their budgets spiral downward, even as the state population grows and they are pressed to do more. Year after year, land trusts and resource agencies have been scanning headlines and election results, looking for a sign that this, at last, could be a good year for a bond act. Year after year, hopes have risen--then fallen.
Now, at last, the economy is booming. Consensus has it that, yes, it looks like a good year for a bond act. There's great hope that the 1998 ballot will contain legislation that will give parks and wildlife agencies a big new pot of money. If and when it does, land trust members around the state will join with their counterparts in public agencies and throw one heck of a party, complete with fireworks--or maybe just 1,000 points of light.

Janet Diehl, manager of the Coastal Conservancy's Nonprofits Programs, works with land trusts to buy and/or restore natural land and to develop access to the shoreline. Before joining the Conservancy staff in 1989, she worked with local land trusts at the Trust for Public Land.

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