History
Preservation Ranch suffers from a long legacy of neglect and misuse, resulting in significant negative impacts on the forest, wildlife and natural resources.
- From 1876 to 1945 the Property was comprised primarily of separate homesteader claims, with many acres cleared for orchards, cattle and sheep grazing and limited timber harvesting.
- The parcels on the Property were haphazardly created without the benefit of contemporary land use policies, environmental review or impact mitigation. The result was parcel boundaries cutting across mountains, streams and roads resulting in a high degree of fragmentation in terms of natural resources.
- After World War II, timber companies began aggregating parcel ownership and land use was converted strictly to timber production.
- Aggressive mechanized clear cut logging began in 1950's and 1960's with the forest clear-cut of merchantable timber at least twice, with certain areas harvested three times.
- With limited environmental protections in place, the maximum amount of timber was removed, without consideration for long-term sustainability of the forest resource, wildlife or watersheds.
Current Condition
Due to the history of poor planning and aggressive logging practices, the Property is in a degraded and depleted condition and faces a number of serious environmental and economic issues including:
- Multiple haphazard parcels - the Property is split into 160 parcels. While these are legal parcels, the property is currently inconsistent with the Sonoma County General Plan in terms of land use density and is fragmented from a resource standpoint.
- Depleted timber resource - 70 years of aggressive over-harvesting by previous owners has compromised the value and future productivity of the forest resources. Dense stands of small diameter tanoaks dominate many productive areas and reduce the growth of native conifers.
- Damaged fish and wildlife habitat - aggressive logging practices in the 1950's and 1960's resulted in a dense forest of small trees that provide minimal habitat value for wildlife species, and left seriously eroding roads many of which have not been stabilized and contribute to a decline in water quality and fish habitat.
- Excessive fire risk - the forest is comprised of dense, young even-age stands of trees, dramatically increasing the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
- Reduced carbon storage - the depleted timber resource results in significantly less carbon stored in the forest compared to the potential of the property.
- Limited economic benefit - the land currently provides minimal economic contribution to the County in terms of timber production tax revenue and employment. Combined with this, the above factors present a major cost and risk to the County's natural resources.
