BY EDWARD HUMES

BUMPING DOWN CANYON DEL GATO MONTES in Tom Mal-oney's dust-splashed Ford provides a whirlwind demonstrationof why so many ecologists, geologists, herpetologists, birders,desert rats, and self-professed "oak geeks" are swooning over thenew Tejon Ranch Conservancy: It is nature's theme park writlarge, the realCaliforTiia Adventure, now open to the outsideworld for the first time in 140 years.

This half-hour ride down the canyon, a vivid slice from a day-long trek through the ranch, began 2,000 feet up at Ridge Road.The ridge overlooks rows of foothills ciiveried with the gray-greenfoliage and dinosaur-skin bark of blue oak, black oak, and brewer's

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oak and. just beyond, a hillside of coast liveoak and sycamore. The hardwood treeshave grown so dense that we can't seca scrap of ground through their Jarkcanopies. Above them on the highestridgelines, white fir dominates. A red-tailed hawk stares back at us from the tallestfir branch. Down a neighboring canyon-mere minutes away—thick stands of incensecedar congregate around El Paso Creek, ashady glade svirarming with ladybugs and

3 8 • J A N U A 1Í I ' • F L H H V A H V 2 0 1 0 PHOTOGRAPHY BY IAN SHIVE

filled with the wood-shaving aroma of cedar bark. Barreling d o \ ^Gato Montes, we pass the canyon live oaks standing like gnarledkings in a red-bloomed field of California buckwheat. The mouthof the canyon approaches, and the road ctfrvcs, oifTerhig np a flt^lsurprise. As a siring of wild black pigs spooks and races oft"v4he -Ford makes the turn, kicking up a cloud of acrid brown dust andrevealing a forest of Joshua trees. They twist up from a desertthat seems to appear out of nowhere, cloaked in the shimmer ofheat waves. The shock of this magical tran.sition makes me gasp.

One canyon, one breathtaking ride, four separate Californiaecologies crammed together in an ultimate TripTik: We have

Tejon Ranch, more than a quarter-million acresof valley oak, feral pigs, and just plain wild.

S i E K R A • 3 9

From top left: A bobcat; a fern In UpperTejon Canyon; red ladybugs carpet a cedar;Tom Matoney, executive director of the Tejon Ranch Conservancy, surroundedby San Joaquín Valley grasslands at sunrise.

seen South Coast Ranges, Sierra Nev.ida, Central Valley, and MojaveDesen, all converging and commingling in one of nature's great nioshpits, Tejon Ranch.

Some of California's oldest and largest oak forests grow here, with16 of the state's 23 native oak species represented. Mountain lions,black bears, bobcats, and pronghom roam here. The endangered Cali-fornia condor forages in fragile numbers on the ranch, where the skieswere once black witli the giant birds. There is no other place like TejonRanch in California—and perhaps in the world.

"This place just blows everyone away," says Maloney, the fledglingesœcutive director of the fledgling Tejon Ranch Conservancy. "I took abotanist on a tour last spring, and she was mesmerized, staring and mut-

tering to herself, and finally she jumped out of thecar and started crawling through the brush. She-said, 'There's 40 different plant species here, andnone of them are supposed to be together. Thisis unbelievable!'"

Maloney laughs. "We hear that a lot. We saythat a lot."

His job requires as much office time as field-work, but he seems less the boardroom type andmore at home tromping through the scrub, histrusty Swarovski scope and Sibley bird guide inhand, lips puckered to whistle, tweet, or scoldsome nearby jay or wren. No conversation withMaloney is complete unless it is punctuated by anexcited pointing skyward at some passing passer-ine, or the occasional birdcall inserted like a par-

GREATCENTRALVALLEY

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SOUTHCOAST

r^ f SIERRAJ / NEVADA

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TEJON RANCH r i ^

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j - l MOJAVE,^4r*\ 4 DESERT

NATURELANDThe 270,000 unfragmented acres of Tejon Ranch, borderingthe second-most-populous region in the United States, arevisible from Interstate 5 as drivers head south into themaw of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The largest

chunk of privately ov/ned vi/itderness in Southern\ California embraces four of the Golden State's

eight eco-regions; the grasslands of theMojave Desert; the oak woodlands of the

Great Central Valley; the chaparral-9. studded South Coast; and the pine

\ , forests of the Sierra Nevada.TEJONRANCH

tcntlictical phrase—liis enthusiasm making it allquite charming. "Look, that's an acorn wood-pecker," he whispers, interrupting himself, thenpointing out the canyon oaks vt'ith beautifullysculpted and hollowed limbs, painstakinglyshaped by woodpeckers that use them to storetheir aconi-s.

The job of getting a handle on tlic s ingle-largestconservation dedication of private land in statehistory has been the challenge of a lifetime for thetall and lanky naturalist. Maloney's first monthson the job have been beyond busy, as the formerproject director for the Nature Conservancy or-ganizes botanical and faunal surveys of a vastlandscape that has not been systematically stud-ied since the days of John Xantus de Vesey, theexiled Hungarian naniralist who sent astonishingspecimens to the Smithsonian Institution—in the1850s. Now there are bird counts and ripariansurveys to undertake, "citizen science" expedi-tions to organize, and climate analyses to launch,essential for shaping conservation practices for awanner future, Camera traps have been set tomonitor wildlife activity in sensitive habitats.

Maloney also conducts tours for guests rang-ing from VIPs to inner-city kids hungry for ex-posure to nature, and he is organizing a new do-cent program with nature and resource groupsso that the once-closed-and-gated ranch can beopened to hiking and guided public access. "Ithas been a bit busy," he concedes.

Nonetheless, Maloney, 45. unabashedly callsbuilding this new conservancy from the ground

up his dream job, perhaps the only lure that could have pulled himfrom his resource-management work in California's Central C'oastregion, which includes the Carrizo Plain, an area referred to, withouthyperbole, as the state's Serengeti. "If there is one word to sum upthe experience here so far, it is discovery,^ he says. "Every day I'm outhere on the ranch brings a new one."

The Tejon Ranch Conservancy came into being in May 2008, anunexpected partnership between the Tejon Ranch Company,Audubon California, the Planning and Conservation League, the Nat-ural Resources Defense Council, the Endangered Habitats League,and the Sierra Club. The agreement designates np to 90 percent ofthe 270,00Ü-acre ranch for permanent conservation in exchange for

^^ There's 40 different plant specieshere, and none of them are supposedto be together. This is unbelievable!^'

the environmental groups' commitment to refrain from opposing de-velopment on the remaining acreage. The owners want to build a lux-ury mountain resort in the ranch's westernmost high country, nearcondor habitat, and a separate development of 23,1)00 homes in thesouthern lowland corner—a new city of 18.4 square miles and 70,000people to rise between Los Angeles and Bakersfield.

The development plans tace continued opposition from other en-vironmental groups, tribal officials, and local residents concerned aboutsprawl, traffic, endangered species, dwindling water supplies, and cli-mate change. But there is widespread agreement on all sides that thelands, habitats, and species to be preserved by the conservancy haveenormous, even epic value. Bill Corcoran, the Sierra Club's seniorrepresentative for tiie region at the time of the conservation agreement

S i E R U A • 4 1

and one of its negotiators, called its impact onSouthern California the "ecological equivalent ofthe Louisiana Purchase." Mike White, the conser-vancy's newly hired consen'ation director, says theconcentrated variation of landscapes, climates, andelevations at Tejon makes it a living laboratory for.species resilience and adaptation. White cites as oneexample the divergence of two closely related rep-tiles on the ranch: the blunt-nosed leopard lizard andthe long-nosed leopard lizard. They are, in essence,the Darwin's finches of Tejon, and scientists—fromclimate experts to oak specialists to condor mavens—are lining up for a shot at studying the environmentthat produced them.

"Tejon is a profoundly important place for under-standing these processes," White says. "You can al-most watch evolution happen here."

TEJON IS SPANISH FOR "BADGER/' the creature that, accord-ing to legend, confronted the first Spanish soldiers to enter TejonCanyon in the heart of the ranch. The land has long been coveted forits fertility, beauty, and strategic location on the historic Grapevineroute through the Tehachapi Mountains—occupied hy the Yokuts andseveral other Native American tribes, claimed by Mexico in the 19thcentury, then finally made U.S. terrain after California's admission tothe Union in 1848. Fort Tejon was established in 1854 by EdwardFitzgerald Beale. a storied military man, explorer, and land baron. Bealeuscd his presidential appoinnnents as California superintendent of theBureau of Indian Affairs, surveyor general of Cali-fornia and Nevada, and chief Indian negotiator forthe U.S. Army to sequester the local tribes on reser-vations, then buy up Fort Tejon and four rancherosto form the present-day boundaries of Tejon Ranch.

The Beale family sold the ranch for $3 million in1912 to a consortium of investors led by real estatemagnate Harry Chandler, publisher of the LosAttge-les Times. The Times Mirror Company eventuallytook the Tejon Ranch Company public, laid andcanceled plans for massive development in the1980s, and finally sold the property to the investmentgroup that now controls the land.

Throughout, Tejon Ranch has been a place forgrazing, hunting, cowboys on horseback, and a fewother activities—a leaseholder cement plant, somesmall-scale oil production, a bit of farming. Despitethe constant presence of cattle, Maloney says, thelandscape has remained surprisingly intact. So whenthe current ownership announced ambitious newdevelopment plans on the 420-square-mile ranch,environmental groups began to take an interest, andsome of the first modern studies of the property'sconservation significance commenced—by noneother than Mike White, then working for the Con-servation Biology Institute. He was limited at thetime to literally "peeking over the fence" at a ranchowned by developers disinterested in cooperating

with conservationists, but his series of three re-ports, beginnhig in 2003, nonetheless put TejonRanch on the radar as a top priority for the state'smajor environmental groups.

In 2(X)8, the agreement that spawned the TejonRancli Conservancy was signed, providing for thecreation of conservation easements and openspace on 178,000 acres. The conservancy also gotthe option to buy additional easements over thenext two years—at market value—on another

WILDLIFE CROSSINGPUBLIC AND PRIVATE BOUNDARIES don't mean much to pronghorn, elk,

and other California wildlife. In a warming world, they must be able to move

between national parks, wilderness areas, and other public lands to feed.

breed, and raise their young. Much of that movement will occur on private

land like Tejon Ranch. As stewards of a majority of the nation's lands and

waters, private landowners are key partners in building a national system of

conservation areas that will secure our natural heritage for the future.

The Tejon Ranch conservation agreement is a crucial part of the Sierra

Club's Resilient Habitats campaign to protect habitat and migration corri-

dors in every state. One campaign goal is to work with landowners to pro-

tect 20 million acres of private lands and

waters by 2020, This will require conser-

vationists'supporting the landowners'

efforts to manage their property to ben-

efit wildlife, including advocating for

financial incentives and other public

resources to make doing so as easy as

possible. — Barf Semcer

• ON THE WEB For more on Resilient

Habitats, go to sierraclub.org/habitat.

This article was funded by the Sierra Club's

Hurjter-Angier Program outreach cam-

paign (sierraclub.org/sierrasportsmen).Semcer, the Ciubs fish and wild-life guru, would rather be fishing.

4 2 • J A N U .•. R Y / F E B R U .M( Y 2 0 1 0

AÜH

62,()ÍX)acresof land, including a highly prized na-tive grasslands area of Antelope Valley that Mal-oney calls an "absolute must." The agreement—which mirrors many of the recommendationsWhite worked up years earlier—also envisions thecreation of a state park (on indefinite hi)Íd becauset)f California's budget crisis) and realigning a 37-niilc section of the Pacific Crest Trail through theproperty. This West Coast version of the Ap-palachian Trail, running fri)iTi the Mexican bor-der to the Canadian border, will in coming yearstraverse the Tehachapis through the heart of theranch, as was always intended, instead of its cur-rent traipse through Mojave lowlands.

California, of course, is rife with extraordinarydesert, mountain, coastal, and forest landscapes,irom the lushness of Sequoia National Forest tothe sparse beauty ofjoshua Tree National l*ark.Wliat makes Tejon Ranch, the largest piece of pri-vate property in the state, so special—and gives itsuch high conservation value—is its role as a cross-roads for so many different landscapes and biomes.

An ecological map of the region tells the storyin a glance. The South Coast Ranges, the Sanjoaquin Valley, the Mojave, and the Sierra Nevadaall meet along the Grapevine as it climbs from theL.A. basin toward the ranch. Like a keystone in agreat arch, Tejon Ranch lies at the nexus of thosetour regions, occupying a footprint nine times thesize of San Francisco. With the adjacent valleyconverted almost entirely to agriculture, homes,and iiil, the ranch provides the only corridtir be-tween the regions for wildlife migration, the onlyway to keep the vast landscapes connected and in-tact, and the only chance to fill die gap in protectedlands, forests, and parks to the north and south.

"Anywhere on Earth, the chance to plug thatsort of gap would be a high priority," says Mal-

From left: The horned lizard, threatened in California; Sierra Nevada habitat givesway to the Mojave Desert in Canyon del Gato Montes; pronghorn disappearedfrom the region a century ago, but a herd has been reintroduced at Tejon Ranch.

oney. "But then you add this convergence of ecosystem.s, and that's whyTejon Ranch has been the big kahuna for so many conservationists."

"GODDAMN PIGS," Maloney mutters for the third time today, ashe surveys a stand of oaks and gooseberry near a small stream, badiybrowsed, trampled, and soiled by wild pigs feasting on acorns. "Theythink they own the place. And they kinda do."

Pigs, to Maloncy's surprise, seem to be the biggest animal threat toecosystems in the ranch—far more damaging than the moderate graz-ing regimen the ranch employs with its cattle. The grazing, he says,actually keeps nonnative grasses and weeds in check, which in turnhelps the ranch's colorful seasonal wildfiowers flourish—their riots ofspringtime color can be seen up and dowT) die Grapevine by passersbyon Interstate 5. The pigs, however, are another matter. They were in-troduced to the ranch by accident in the early 1990s when some ani-mals on neigliboring land got loose. They have proved to be a stub-born and wily adversary, even though the ranch sponsors regular huntsthat claim 800 to 1,(K)() pigs each year.

Because ol this, Maloney says, one of the conservancy's first priori-ties is to survey riparian areas that pigs and cove's are damaging- Fencesaround these watersheds, accoiiipanied by careful moving of salt licksand water troughs for the cows, can turn some of these stressed-outhabitats into conservation gold mines—"low-hanging fruit for us," Mal-oney says. UC Santa Barbara professor Frank Davis of the Bren Schoolot Environmental Science and Management is working with severalgraduate students who are surveying these riparian zones for the con-servancy as a yearlong master's project. Davis, who also serves on theconservancy's 12-niembtT board, is an oak specialist and one of the sci-entists who have become entranced by the ranch. He once exclaimedthat the ranch was Disneyland for oak geeks, but he later came to ruethat metaphor and now prefers to say, "On a scale of I to l(),it'san 11."

Traditional uses now in place at Tejon Ranch—cattle grazing, hunt-ing, and existing leases—will continue in the conservation easement

Continued on page t i l

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arc.Ls under the ternis t)f tlie agreement,altlioiigh Maloney and his staff"say theywill gr.idii.illy be able to propose betterland-manugemeru practices so that theranching activities mesh with conser-vation needs, Hunting, for example, hasconservation betiefits. It cuitails the pigpopulation and provides food for con-dors, which love to feast on pig guts.

Meanwhile, research eilbrts spanningevery part of the ranch are gearing up,involving academics, volunteers, natureorganizations, and what Maloiiey andWhite call "citizen scientists." These aretlic bird lovers, reptile aficionados, andother knowledgeable laypeople with apassion for nature and the ability togather the large amounts of data that theconservancy needs to establish a base-line for conditions and critters on ther:tnch. It will take years before Tejon'stLicural setting is understood.

Not far from Canyon del GatoMontes, Maloney stands at one of hisfavorite points on the ranch, a ridgeoverlooking the rolling grasslandsstudded with valley and canyon oakdiat he hopes to acquire—if the conser-vancy can raise the money. This is an-other spot the Pacific Crest Trail couldtraverse. Prongborn leap through thearea below, also home to the endan-gered Sanjoaquin kit fox. In spring,Maloney stood near this spot transfixedas flocks of birds poured ofFthe desert,coming to Tejon for sancttiary fromthe summer heat. Now, in fall, difVcr-ent birds are arriving for winter refuge."I wish I had the time tojust birdwatchthe whole ranch," he sighs.

By next spring, Maloney says, therelatively small public-access programin place will expand with docent-ledtours, and a lot more people will be ableto see what Maloney prizes every day.He has invited regional nature organi-

zations to provide guides, docents, bird-ers, and hikers for the program. The re-sponse from visitors so far has been oneof the more gratifying parts of his work,he says. He was particularly fond of agroup of kids from the Audtibon Cen-ter at Debs Park in Los Angeles. One oftliem, Eddy Chavarria, was moved toleave behind a prose poem that begins.

With the tree so high and me so low,

flic sky turns green wiih patches of blue.hi this city of nature I see the skyscrap-

ers where thtyßrst .-¡tart out.

"We read that out loud at the lastboard meeting," Maloney says. "Howcool isthat?"»

EDWARD HUMES is the author of eightbooks, induding Eco Barons: The Dream-ers, Schemers, and Millionaires WhoAre Saving Our Planet (Ecco, 2009);sec "Mi.xeci Media. " page Í04. He won aPulitzer Prize in ¡989.

S 1 H « H A • 111

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