An international organization that strives to protect open space
and coastal waters recently purchased a significant plot of land
teaming with roaming elk.
The Nature Conservancy bought the 2,899-acre San Antonio Valley
ranch on the north end of Henry Coe State Park at a price of $5.2
million.
Gilroy – An international organization that strives to protect open space and coastal waters recently purchased a significant plot of land teaming with roaming elk.
The Nature Conservancy bought the 2,899-acre San Antonio Valley ranch on the north end of Henry Coe State Park at a price of $5.2 million.
The nonprofit organization, which has headquarters in San Francisco and Monterey, stepped in after discovering that the ranch’s owner had unsuccessfully attempted to sell his land to the California Department of Fish and Game.
The state department wasn’t able to purchase the land immediately so the Nature Conservancy, which as a nonprofit reserves the power to overstep many legal barriers, bought the ranch with cash from a grant provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and a grant and loan from the Conserving California Landscapes Initiative.
“We’re a nonprofit so we work as a (intermediary) and it gives us an opportunity to lock the property up and help them on their time frame,” said Lloyd Wagstaff, Mount Hamilton project director for the Nature Conservancy.
The longtime rancher who owned the land wanted to ensure that it was protected, Wagstaff said. The organization will not make a profit off the land, only charging the Department of Fish and Game enough to pay off the money borrowed.
Wagstaff described the site as unique with “rugged, steep country,” and open, flat grasslands.
“A lot of this land has been protected and we look at opportunities to connect these large land holdings so there’s not just these islands of protected land space,” Wagstaff said.
