California Coast & Ocean

Tolay Creek Ranch Acquired
The Sonoma Land Trust acquired 1,657 acres of the Roche family ranch in the Tolay Creek watershed on December 21, 2007, thereby opening the way to restoration of the creek’s entire main stem and allowing wildlife to move within a much-expanded range of protected areas. The Tolay Creek watershed connects upland seasonal and freshwater wetlands to the tidal lowlands of San Francisco Bay.

The property will be added to Tolay Lake Regional Park, nearly doubling the park’s 1,737 acres and linking it to 40,000 acres of protected land along the Sonoma, Napa, and Marin baylands, including the Sears Point, Sonoma Baylands, and Petaluma Marsh restoration projects, and the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. A seven-mile trail is planned from the park to the San Francisco Bay Trail at Sears Point, on San Pablo Bay.

The ranch’s oak woodlands, grasslands, and meadows support a number of state and federally listed threatened and endangered species, including burrowing owls, northwestern pond turtles, golden eagles, and California horned larks. Before turning the land over to the County of Sonoma Regional Parks Department, Sonoma Land Trust will conduct a baseline survey, develop an interim plan to allow continued cattle grazing to control invasive plants, put in fences to keep the cattle out of the creek, and plant native plants. During this period, Regional Parks will lead guided hikes onto the property.

The Conservancy provided $3 million toward the $13 million purchase price, $1 million less than the property’s appraised value. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Board, Sonoma County Agricultural and Open Space District, and the Land Trust also provided funding. The family retained 400 acres of the ranch as part of its Roche Carneros Estate Winery, which is on the other side of Highway 121.

Conserving Tomales Bay and the West Marin Landscape
Almost from its inception three decades ago, the Coastal Conservancy has been working in the Tomales Bay watershed, collaborating with dairy ranchers and others on projects to benefit natural communities as well as local agriculture. In fall 2007, the Conservancy approved three grants totaling $3,000,000 toward those ends.

The Point Reyes National Seashore Association will use $1.5 million approved in September 2007 to help restore over 500 acres of tidal marsh, riparian habitat, and native grasslands on the 550-acre Giacomini Ranch, a former dairy farm purchased by the National Park Service in 2000 and now part of the Seashore. The estimated cost of the project is $5.5 million. The Point Reyes National Seashore Association has raised $4 million from other public and private sources.

The Seashore Association will remove levees built in the 1940s and restore the expansive wetlands that existed here at the mouth of Lagunitas Creek before they were drained for use as pasture. Tidal channels will be expanded and new ones created. Riprap will be removed along the banks of Lagunitas Creek and its tributaries, and replaced with riparian vegetation.

If things go according to plan, the restored wetlands will teem with life, from juvenile coho and chinook salmon to tidewater gobies and California black rails. In addition to providing valuable habitat, the wetlands will improve water quality in Tomales Bay, which has deteriorated over the last century because of excessive fine sediment, nutrients, and pathogens from stormwater runoff, failed septic systems, livestock, and recreational boaters. Two-thirds of the bay’s freshwater inflow passes through the mouth of Lagunitas Creek, where the wetlands will filter out sediment, excess nutrients, and pathogens. The marsh restoration will also provide flood control for homes along the creek by removing levees and other manmade obstructions and increasing the amount of floodplain available for floodwaters.

Two additional Conservancy grants helped the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) to purchase conservation easements over 993 acres of rangelands that also drain to Tomales Bay. One grant, $750,000 approved in September, filled the funding gap needed to secure a conservation easement on 750 acres of the Poncia Ranch and helped the Land Trust raise $1,250,000 in federal and private funds for the purchase. Eugene Poncia, a fourth-generation Marin County rancher who has lived on the ranch his whole life, used the income from selling the easement to buy out his cousins, who owned 50 percent of the ranch, enabling him to continue farming the land. Without the easement, Poncia would have had to sell the ranch on the open market to fulfill an agreement with his cousins.

The second $750,000 grant to MALT, approved in November and supplemented by $250,000 of private funds, purchased a conservation easement on 243 acres of the 505-acre Tomales Farm and Dairy, enabling its owners to pay for improvements to the land and infrastructure needed to begin organic dairy operations, grow specialty crops on small tracts, and make artisan cheese to sell directly to the public. This type of innovative, specialized agriculture is increasingly necessary for small farmers to survive in areas like Marin County that are highly valued for development. In 2006, the Conservancy helped fund purchase of an easement on 178 acres of the eastern portion of this farm, which allowed the owners to begin an organic cattle grazing business and build fences to keep the cattle out of Keyes Creek, to protect the creek banks and allow willows and other native plants to grow back.

Both the Poncia and Tomales Dairy conservation easements include requirements to protect streams from the effects of inappropriate grazing. Keeping the creeks healthy as they flow through these rangelands enhances habitat for coho salmon, California red-legged frog, and other wildlife, and protects Tomales Bay from the sediments, nutrients, and pathogens that degrade habitat and sometimes shut down the bay’s oyster-growing operations.