Deal safeguards large redwood forest
Preservation group buys 14,838-acre easement for $25M By Paul Rogers, The Mercury News
Published: February 28, 2021, 6:00am
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2 Photos Save the Redwoods League paid $24.7 million to buy a conservation easement over the sweeping Mailliard Ranch, located in southern Mendocino County near the Sonoma County line. (Dreamstime) Photo Gallery
SAN JOSE, Calif. A vast redwood forest 80 miles north of San Francisco and sprawling nearly as large as Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains has received permanent protection under a deal between a Bay Area environmental group and the property’s longtime owners.
Under the agreement, Save the Redwoods League, based in San Francisco, paid $24.7 million to buy a conservation easement over the sweeping Mailliard Ranch, in southern Mendocino County near the Sonoma County line.
Environmental deal protects swath of redwood forest in Mendocino County
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Save the Redwoods League paid $24.7 million for a conservation easement over the sweeping Mailliard Ranch, in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley.Dreamstime / TNS
A sprawling redwood forest in southern Mendocino County has received permanent protection under a $24.7 million deal between a Bay Area environmental group and the property’s longtime owners, San Francisco’s socially and politically prominent Mailliard family.
Save the Redwoods League bought three conservation easements across the 14,838-acre Mailliard Ranch in early February. The agreement will permanently safeguard the land in Anderson Valley, and its complement of the world’s tallest tree species, from subdivision and development, the environmental group said. A conservation easement is a legal agreement that limits land uses to protect conservation values of the land.
The forest will not be open to the public. The family will continue to own the property and be allowed to conduct commercial logging at half the rate currently permitted under state laws on second-growth redwoods there, as it has done for generations. But more than 1,000 acres of land will be preserved forever, while 69 legal parcels that could have been divided into ranchettes and vineyards will be retired.
“Our vision isn’t to make a park out of every acre of redwood forest, said Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League. “We want to make sure we don’t lose any more of it.”
Save the Redwoods League, the San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to conserving redwood forests, has secured nonpossessory rights to nearly 15,000 acres of property at Mailliard Ranch, about 80 miles outside of Mendocino.
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