Contra Costa Times
By Denis Cuff
April 23, 2004

CLAYTON - Dorothy Wright wanted to sell her home on the east slopes of Mount Diablo before she dies, but she didn't want it to go to developers. She didn't want to spoil the oak-covered slopes east of Clayton that have been in the family since 1895, when her husband's grandfather started raising cattle there. But selling to the state park system meant red tape she abhorred.

Wright found another way. She sold her property to a nonprofit land trust, adding to the boom of these groups as a major force in preserving America's diminishing open space.

"I could have done better financially by putting it on the open market, but I didn't want to do that," she said. "The mountain has been a focal point of our life. I feel the land is in good hands."

Her sale of 76 acres for $640,000 to Save Mount Diablo in 2000 allows her to stay in her home for life, but preserves the property until it can become part of a park.

Land trusts, mostly grass-roots groups, have popped up like wildflowers on a spring prairie.Their number nationwide increased 164 percent from 479 to 1,263 between 1985 and 2000, according to the Land Trust Alliance.The area protected by land trusts increased from 1.9 million acres to 6.2 million between 1990 and 2000, the coalition estimates.

In Contra Costa and Alameda counties, Save Mount Diablo, Muir Heritage and Tri-Valley Conservancy land trusts have preserved some 12,800 acres or 20 square miles of fields, range land, marshes and vineyards in the last decade.

A much larger nationwide group, the Trust for Public Lands, bought 4,000 acres at Cowell Ranch near Byron last year for a new state park.

Most land trusts, however, remain grass-roots organizations of people who band together to form a nonprofit group to buy land or development rights for land, and raise money do accomplish those tasks.

"Land trusts are a way for the community to get involved protecting natural resources," said Tina Batt, the Muir Heritage Land Trust's executive director. Local residents formed that trust 15 years after developers offered to set aside 150 acres of hilly land as open space if any group would step forward to accept it.

Not long afterward, when her group had to raise $75,000 to buy another property, Batt recalls worrying that people would open their wallets. "Then one of my neighbors came to me and said, 'Here's $1,000. I know you can do it,'" she recalled. "He gave us courage, and we succeeded."

Save Mount Diablo, the East Bay's oldest land trust at 33 years, is so organized in fund raising that it raised $75,000 last year at its annual dinner auction, which caters to nature lovers. Two supporters each paid $850 apiece for a guided bird-watching hike.

Land trusts buy land the government can't afford to buy, can't buy fast enough, or in some cases refuses to consider important enough to buy. A trust can take weeks to buy land that it would take government months or years to buy, public land managers say. State government resource agencies sometimes provide money to trusts in recognition that the local community groups are far better suited to broker deals with landowners and solicit donations to pay for it, officials say.

"They know the landowners and have a closer relationship to them than a government agency would have," David Wayman, of the California Coastal Conservancy, which supplies grants to many land trusts.

Wright already knew several members of Save Mount Diablo when her husband, Martin, died in 2000 and she decided to sell. She was 79 then. She said members of the conservation group shared her attachment to the scenic mountain. "The mountain is a special place," she said as she rumbled up a slope of oak and laurel trees in her four-wheel drive Suzuki Samurai.

She expects the land someday to provide a rare access point from Morgan Territory Road to the east side of Mount Diablo State Park.

Not all land purchases by the nonprofit group are as big as Wright's spread. Muir Heritage Land Trust accepted the donation of a house and 7-acre estate in Orinda as a nature preserve that may become a model for more gifts like it. The estate of the late Margaret Bodfish, a nature lover murdered in 1999, called for her estate to be preserved as a wildlife sanctuary. Muir Heritage had never taken on such a small property, but agreed to do so because of strong support from Orinda residents. Rent from the house covers land-maintenance costs.

Some farmers grumble that nonprofit groups' purchases of land takes it off the tax rolls and cuts into taxes to support government services. John Gamper, a California Farm Bureau spokesman, criticized land trusts that acquire farm or ranch land and then remove it from production. "We're losing enough farmland without land trusts kicking farmers off land," Gamper said.

But Gamper said many land trusts have been a friend to farming by buying up development rights to encourage growers and ranchers to stay in business. New Contra Costa County and Brentwood land trusts have formed to try to preserve farming.

In the Livermore Valley, the Tri-Valley Conservancy has bought development rights on some 3,100 acres of vineyards and olive orchards since 1994 to keep it in production. Sharon Burnham, the land trust executive director, said, "Our whole mission is to care of land and be stewards of the land. That's not really government's job."
Contact Denis Cuff at 925-943-8267 or dcuff@cctimes.com.