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May 2, 2011
Land Trust Acquires Private
Inholding Near San Rafael Wilderness in Los Padres National
Forest
The Remote
69-Acre Parcel in the Sierra Madre Mountains
Will Be Transferred to the Forest Service
Cox Canyon. Photo © LPFW
Cuyama Valley, Calif. — High in
the Sierra Madre Mountains, in the backcountry of Santa Barbara
County, we hiked along a damp drainage on the Cox Canyon
property. The Forest Service district ranger suddenly held up
his hand for us to stop. He pointed to fresh bear tracks. “They
used to hunt grizzlies up here in the Cuyama badlands,” said the
Forest lands officer. We all looked around us with ears perked,
but no bears rustled the surrounding bushes—only the breeze
through early spring wildflowers.
The
Wilderness Land
Trust — in partnership with the
Land Trust for Santa
Barbara County — recently acquired this 69-acre private
parcel surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest. In the
nearby San Rafael and Dick Smith wilderness areas, condors
frequently soar and mountain lions roam near one of the largest
Native American Rock art assemblages in the country. The parcel
is located below the primary flyway for California condors, and
an intermittent creek flows through the property before emptying
into Santa Barbara Canyon and, eventually, the Cuyama River. It
contains scattered conifers, grassy meadows, and lush chaparral
and is located at approximately 4,000 feet in elevation. The
nearest road is located nearly a mile away.
Cox Canyon. Photo © LPFW
When the parcel is transferred
to the Los Padres National Forest later this year, it will
become the first inholding acquired in the southern Los Padres
National Forest in recent memory.
“The owner was ready to sell
and a residence was allowed on the property, which is very close
to good roads and an easy drive from the Southern California
metro area,” said Aimee Rutledge, California Program Manager for
the Wilderness Land Trust.
“We worked with willing sellers to protect Cox Canyon as wild
and to ensure that ‘man is a visitor and shall not remain’ — a
goal of the Wilderness Act. We are proud to create the future
opportunity to add Cox Canyon to the San Rafael Wilderness,”
said Reid Haughey, President of the Wilderness Land Trust.
“We are happy to have the chance to partner with the Wilderness
Land Trust. We acted quickly to help bring this beautiful piece
of land into our national forest,” said Michael Feeney,
Executive Director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County.
"Our family is pleased to cooperate with the Trust in this
transaction and to know that this pristine piece of de facto
wilderness in the Sierra Madre will become part of the National
Forest lands," said Eric Hvolboll of Santa Barbara.
ForestWatch was involved early in the process, contacting
the Trust and urging it to take a leadership role in this
acquisition, scouting the property to document its resource
values, and building support for the acquisition with various
wildlife and land management agencies. The land trusts then
negotiated the transaction and acquired the property earlier
this year.
The parcel is in an area that
could one day be joined to the nearby San Rafael Wilderness. The
San Rafael Wilderness was established in 1968 and was the first
area added to the National Wilderness Preservation System after
passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. In 197,380 acres of
chaparral-covered Sierra Madres and San Rafael Mountains,
elevations range from 1,166 feet near the confluence of Manzana
Creek and the Sisquoc River in the west to over 6,800 feet on
Big Pine Mountain near the eastern boundary and Dick Smith
Wilderness.
Cox Canyon parcel indicated
with red arrow, approximately
26 miles due north of Santa Barbara (as the condor flies).
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