The Peninsula Open Space Trust this week announced the purchase and permanent protection of 80 acres within an ecologically important flood plain and wildlife corridor in Coyote Valley.
The 13th such conservation purchase by POST on the valley floor, this property, which POST is calling Midway Fields, enables a critical multi-year restoration of the historic Laguna Seca floodplain to begin, POST said in a press release.
This transaction increases the number of protected acres on the floor of Coyote Valley to more than 1,600. Located south of Bailey Avenue and west of Santa Teresa Boulevard, Midway Fields connects to several POST-protected properties that stretch north-south along Fisher Creek.
Conserving these 80 acres creates a 1.5-mile contiguous corridor of protected creek-side lands within the 100-year floodplain that extends across 1,000 acres south of Bailey Avenue.
“Coyote Valley is regionally significant in that it provides a natural first line of defense for the greater San José area against the impacts of climate change,” said Gordon Clark, president of POST. “This land along a creek corridor provides both connectivity for wildlife movement across the valley and a place for groundwater to be absorbed and stored naturally.
“Protecting this keystone parcel along Fisher Creek enables POST and our partners to dream bigger in terms of restoration and help return this landscape to its historic ecological function over time.”
POST purchased the property for $6.375 million from a private party. Midway Fields lies within North Coyote Valley in an area identified in the 2017 Coyote Valley Landscape Linkage Report as a necessary wildlife linkage, according to POST.
Coyote Valley, known as a “last chance landscape,” enables species to migrate between the Santa Cruz and Diablo Mountain Ranges, thereby protecting regional biodiversity and ecological health in an era of climate change and land fragmentation, POST added. This network of protected lands connects more than 1.1 million acres of core habitat and protected areas in the Santa Cruz and Diablo Mountain Ranges surrounding the Santa Clara Valley, representing a public-private investment of more than $3 billion.
All of Coyote Valley constitutes part of the ancestral lands of numerous Indigenous peoples who stewarded the land for millennia. Members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the Tamien Nation continue to reside in and steward the region today, according to POST.
Future plans
The property is strategically vital to the restoration and “naturalization” of the entire Fisher Creek corridor, says the press release. The creek was created as a manmade channel more than 100 years ago to drain water from the landscape for agricultural use.
Over time, it has come to play an important environmental role. Restoring the creek to its natural function as part of the Laguna Seca floodplain will allow excess floodwater to spread across the landscape, where the land can absorb it.
As a seasonal lake, Laguna Seca acts as a stormwater buffer, helping to prevent downstream flooding in nearby areas and protecting the city of San José from significant damage, according to POST. This wetland and its vegetation also serve as natural storage and filtration systems for drinking water supplies, capturing carbon from the atmosphere and helping to reduce the impacts of climate change.
Expanding the Laguna Seca wetlands will also help to provide a resilient habitat for a diverse range of native fauna—including rare and protected species such as the tri-colored blackbird, California red-legged frog, Northwestern pond turtle, California tiger salamander—and migratory birds, among many others that inhabit and move through this landscape.
“This latest acquisition is a key Coyote Valley puzzle piece that opens possibilities for restoring the Fisher Creek corridor at scale,“ said Andrea Mackenzie, general manager of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority (the Authority), a close partner of POST in the acquisition. “Through our Coyote Valley Conservation Areas Master Plan (CVCAMP), we aim to restore, re-engineer and rewild this landscape to look and act more like it did before it was channelized, providing millions of dollars in environmental and climate resilience services to our communities each year, naturally.”
Per a 2020 agreement governing their collaborative work in Coyote Valley, the Authority will manage Midway Fields for POST as part of its CVCAMP efforts for several years. A transfer of ownership from POST to the Authority is anticipated in time.
