State Kicks in for Rush Ranch
Nature Center

This summer, the Solano Land Trust will be able to start building a new nature and education center at Rush Ranch in Solano County with the help of $500,000 in Proposition 50 funds approved by the Conservancy. Construction is expected to be completed by year's end.

The 2,070-acre Rush Ranch, located along Grizzly Island Road just south of Fairfield and Suisun City, contains one of the best remaining examples of brackish (slightly salty) marsh in the United States. This marsh supports several endangered and threatened plants and animals, including the California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.

The nature center will stand within a complex of historic ranch buildings, including a working blacksmith shop, a 1932 Sears kit house, a barn, water tower, and working windmill. From the ranch complex, trails run through fields and along the edges of the marsh.

The center will have a classroom with multimedia capability, and a new parking lot and ADA-compliant restrooms will make it easier for visitors with limited mobility to take part in horse-drawn carriage tours of the ranch. Rush Ranch is not connected to the power grid; solar and wind power will supply most of the center's needs. The new building will include a field lab, office, and quarters for visiting scientists working on projects with the San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, as well as accommodations for a caretaker.

In 1988, the Conservancy provided $1.5 million to the land trust toward its purchase of the ranch, and over $400,000 for improvements. The funds approved in April will be supplemented by $500,000 from the Estuarine Research Reserve and $250,000 from an anonymous donor. The Solano Land Trust, founded in 1986, is a pioneering collaboration among farmers, environmentalists, developers, and local government to preserve the agricultural legacy and natural landscapes of Solano County. Using innovative, nonconfrontational techniques, the organization has permanently protected over 16,000 acres of natural areas and farmland. Rush Ranch is the land trust's largest and oldest open space preserve.

New Greenway in BART Corridor

The nonprofit Urban Ecology, which works to promote ecological health and social vitality in communities around San Francisco Bay, will prepare a conceptual plan for a 30-mile greenway in the Bay Area Rapid Transit corridor between Fremont and 15th Avenue in Oakland, on land that is now mostly unused and unsightly. The Conservancy approved $100,000 in Proposition 40 funds for the conceptual plan in April. The greenway as now envisioned would resemble the Ohlone Greenway, a multi-use trail built 25 years ago between Berkeley and El Cerrito that continues to be highly popular.

This opportunity to build a new greenway arises because BART is about to begin an extensive seismic retrofitting project that will take more than ten years to complete. Like the Ohlone Greenway, the proposed new greenway would include pedestrian and bicycle trails linked to the Bay and Ridge Trails, and also playgrounds and open space.