Tejon Ranch Development

[texass]

This does not look like good news......Tejon mountain Village is right smack in the middle of the south side.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/c...0,4242813.story

 

[hatchet1]

houses,state park,people,animal sanctuary .its just a matter of time, big buisness and money always win.
im sure its along ways out yet, but its coming, man i gotta get out there and hunt it at least once

 

[Marty]

How many years until the first pet gets eaten, or the first child gets bitten, by a coyote or mountain lion, and the lamenting begins?

 

[Speckmisser]

Not news, and yeah, it's still a long ways out. This seems to come up every spring, and it is a drag that it's probably gonna happen...eventually... but it's the way of the bloody world.

 

[MQ]

more from CNN

Tejon Ranch news from CNN

 

[MJB]

That's why the spring pass was a no brainer.......soon there will be no more.....unless you have the CASH!

Start saving!

 

[jackrabbit]

After reading the CNN review, it looks like a very good deal for Tejon and the developer. Tejon gets credit for preserving what is likely to be largely poor developable land, the state kicks in some purchase money, and the develpor (Tejon?) gets a high value for land next to a great public park!! Say goodbye to most hunting; and there will be signs to "please do not feed the condors because any food you give them will kill them!" You think they might pave the roads to the good pig hunting areas? How about rope-tows down into the canyons to retrieve pig carcasses? Naw -- probably to forward thinking at this point.

 

[bigworm]

Very long term plans. Look at how many empty homes there are right now. There is not a job market to support the revenue, to purchase these homes. They may be getting the plans in place, but it will be years before you see any ground break. Good idea to make money, but a terrible market, to support the plan. Plus with the gas prices, who's going to make the longer commute. I would not worry for now, just enjoy what you can!

 

[spectr17]

Tejon is changing now, they're already laying infracstructure there. Pipeline last I saw.

Puttin 18 golf courses on one of the most beautiful ridges is SoCal so some guys in funny hats and pants can whack a little white ball around is sick.

Better hunt it now if you've ever wanted to, soo it will be just a memory.

 

[Wild1]

It might be a ways away, but not that far. If your child is in elementary school, or yournger, they'll never be able to hunt there (unless they institute a bow hunting only program somewhere on the property).

 

[easymoney]

It's coming folks and I heard High Desert Hunt Club was also purchased by the Tejon Ranch. Wonder if the 26,000 homes will have any effect on the condors? It would be in the heart of the last undisturbed habitat in So CA... Will DFG make houses off limits to save the condor?

 

[spectr17]

<div align='left'>Outdoor News Service

LEBEC – The Tejon Ranch Company and a vast coalition of environmental groups and state government announced a plan on Thursday to destroy the historic ranch, its vast open spaces, and keep vast tracts of the land closed to the public. The onerous of back-room deal is reminiscent of the land grab and subsequent creation of the Los Angeles aqueduct that dewatered every stream in the Owens Valley and led to the drying up of Owens Lake.

Of course, that's not the impression you'd get by reading the Los Angeles Times front page story in Thursday's paper.

In return for allowing the Tejon Ranch Company to plop 26,400 homes, sprawling golf courses, hip boutiques, health spas and resort hotels on 32,000 acres of the 272,000-acre ranch in southern Kern County and northern Los Angeles county, the rest of the historic ranch would be "preserved" in a natural state for wildlife and public enjoyment.

Well, sort of.

<div align='left'>

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First off, the two developments are proposed in some of the most environmentally important and sensitive lands on the Tejon. Centennial is the name for a 26,000-house disaster located adjacent to Quail Lake on the western edge of the Antelope Valley. Where those houses would be built is the home to the last population of pronghorn antelope in Southern California and at least two threatened or endangered species. Yet, the more onerous development is the Tejon Mountain Village, a sprawling upscale community of 3,400 multi-million dollar homes plastered across some of the last undeveloped oak grassland in California. The homes would be spaced across mountain ridges and meadows effectively wiping out one of the best California mule deer herds left in the state, and the trick-down impacts on everything from condors to badgers to mountain lions would be disastrous.

But the environmental groups who are signing off on this deal say the public is getting a vast natural area preserved forever. For the public.

Is it? Under the deal, 178,000 acres will be set aside and run by a newly created Tejon Ranch Conservancy. This conservancy will managed by 12 members "appointed by the company and its environmental partners," according to the Times. In additional, the Tejon Ranch Company will fund the conservancy to the tune of $800,000 a year for seven years and then through payouts from home sales once development starts. Doesn't sound like a colossal payoff to the Sierra Club, Audubon California, the National Resources Defense Council, and the others? This will let them run the bulk of the ranch, with no guarantees of general public access, public oversight, or sound management. The public will be as locked out as they are today.

Another 49,000 acres will be offered to California for a state park and another 10,000 offered so the Pacific Crest Trail can be rerouted through ranch. With the state's budget, those 49,000 acres will likely be kept closed and managed as part of the conservancy. Wilderness hikers will get to stroll through once the trail is finished – probably by the turn of the next century. There's another 3,000 acres to be offered for state purchase, but I haven't been able to figure out where or who will get charge of that land. Perhaps it's for a new governor's mansion or governors' retirement community.

This little boondoggle is going to cost taxpayers in California a pretty chunk of change. And the public isn't going to get anything out of it. Honest, good-hearted people who give money to the likes of the Sierra Club and Audubon and TPL going to have their money squirreled away into a chunk of ground they will never likely get to see and enjoy.

Oh, we'll all be told it's the right thing to do (like the L.A. Times article suggested today), and all of the slick magazines these environmental groups send out will have big stories with lots of beautiful pictures of the Tejon and its wildlife and how it's been preserved for future generations.

I'm here to tell you that's crap. They've been bought off and we've been sold out.
The Tejon Ranch is too precious and too important environmentally to be developed any more than it has already. Not another acre should be sold off. It's also too beautiful not to be in the public trust. Not a private conservancy. Not a mismanaged, underfunded state park. It needs to belong to the public.

I'm not one of those who believe it should be a National Park (or even a National Preserve so hunting could be allowed). I think the Tejon Ranch should become the nation's benchmark National Wildlife Refuge.

Why a refuge over a preserve or park? Management options. The Tejon, especially if combined with the 97,000-acre Windwolves Preserve (also run by a conservancy with limited public access) located on adjacent land on the west side of Interstate 5, would create one of the largest and most diverse wildlife refuges in the nation at nearly 370,000 acres.

The Tejon-Windwolves National Wildlife Refuge would have rich water supplies that could be used to mitigate for 100 years of wetland destruction throughout the San Joaquin Valley with creative wetland development (instead of watering pistachios and cotton). Grasslands could be maintained with a huge herd of tule elk (Windwolves already has over 200) and pronghorn. Maybe we could bring grizzly bears back to California. Of course, there would be hunting on the deer herd and for wild pigs, Rocky Mountain elk, tule elk, bears, waterfowl, quail, doves, and turkeys that exist here. There could be campgrounds and hiking trails and fishing on historic stock ponds and Tejon Lake.

Conservative cattle grazing could continue (for fire suppression) and historic ranching exhibits and cattle drives be set up to preserve the memories of this dying culture and give folks a taste of that era. All of these things could pay for the refuge management – something National Park, state park, and conservancy managers just don't get. But most of all, it would be open to the public and managed for wildlife and natural resources. National Wildlife Refuges do that more effectively than any of our underfunded resource agencies – state or federal.

Most of all, none of the Tejon should be sold off to the highest bidder or mis-managed by environmental elitists. Yet, sadly, that would be the result of the proposal that was advanced as the ranch's salvation on Thursday.

[For more on the Tejon Ranch debacle, see Jim Matthews' Outdoor News Service blog here.]

 

[Rancho Loco]

Grizzly bears?

Sorry Jim, but you've gone completely off your rocker.

 

[spectr17]

May 8, 2008

Death knell sounding for the historic Tejon Ranch[/b]

I have been one of those lucky few people who've been able to spend time wandering on the vast Tejon Ranch. I shot my first deer on the ranch as a teenager, and my family and I have been hunting, bird watching, sitting around oak campfires, and hiking on this 270,000-plus-acre property over the last 40 years since that first deer hunt. The photo on the opening page of this web site was taken on the Tejon. It's even rumored that my uncle's ashes are scattered on a hillside above an old hunting cabin that we've been privileged to use during that time.

Ironically, I was even there early this week while the finishing touches were being put on a land deal that is the worst of all worlds for the historic ranch (see my news column here). There were rumors in the wind this week about the details, but I didn't want to believe it would be this bad.

But the signs were there. The developers have been doing stupid things for several years. They had all the flooded trees removed from Tejon Lake because "they weren't pretty," ruining top-notch bass habitat. They've put in little plots of wine grapes and keep them tended, not because there is any intention of making wine, but because they looked nice and would help sell the multi-million dollar homes. There were bronze European red deer (the dumb asses couldn't even get native tule elk bronzes made) plunked down in the middle of wild settings all over the proposed development area. There were monuments built and placed in near-wilderness locations to denote where golf courses and lodges would be situated. If it wasn't so depressing, it would have been laughable.

Yet, if you were able to overlook the bad things, the ranch managed to retain its character. When you drove through one of the gates, you drove back in time 75 years or more. This was a working cattle ranch, really little changed in 200 years. Oh, the grizzly bears were gone (the last one from Southern California being killed nearby), but you could still see a badger (the ranch's namesake) or a mountain lion on any day, and you would most certainly see deer and dove and quail and more types of woodpeckers, hawks, and song birds than you could imagine. Feral hogs have replaced the grizzly bear, turning the soil under the oak trees just like the bears did, looking for acorns, digging wild onion bulbs on the hillsides, or rubbing against fence posts. On Tuesday this week, I watched a weasel hunt, slipping in and out of ground squirrel holes, and later I was shown a photo of nine condors perched on an oak tree on the north side of the ranch. I photographed a Western Tanager feeding on beetles in a giant, sprawling oak on Wednesday morning.

The wildlife on the Tejon is as prolific as in Yellowstone and probably more diverse, but when I think of the Tejon, I think of oaks. The ranch web site says there are nine different kinds of oaks, some 400 years old. I've sat under many of those old giants. Some are like old friends.

Oak fires on the ranch are like a cremation ritual, where you celebrate the warmth, the flames, and the thought-provoking coals the tree limbs provide, toasting their passing. You do that while laughing with family and friends and telling stories. The oaks are always a backdrop on the Tejon, one way or another.

Today, I cringe to think that it might have been over a Tejon oak fire where the soul of the ranch was bargained away for money and control. But a lot of souls were sold or bartered away in this deal, and I suspect they will experience a different kind of fire.

 

[spectr17]

It's a travesty.

 

[loadsprayer]

This makes me want to:

 

[Rancho Loco]

Gawd - I've never seen so much hyperventilating since this issue last year.

It's a giant conservation easement. Private landowners do it all the time. Tejon could shut off hunting tomorrow, and it would be within their rights. They could turn it into a giant goat farm. They can do whatever their stockholders want. They are a private holding, after all. This just got the OK from some major enviros to do their development - which still needs to go through county planning, and nothing in this agreement prevents some other plant or critter lover from throwing down some lawsuits to prevent building.

 

[spectr17]

Trajedy. Bye bye Tejon. The goofy golfers win another beautiful mtn. You must be a duffer Rancho?

 

[Rancho Loco]

Hey, I've always favored cows over condos on the hills of CenCal.

If you don't like this - file a lawsuit. Nothing in the agreement prohibits lawsuits to halt the building or plans. Bring back the Grizzly bear while you're at it, and make sure you still have re-enactments of cattle drives for the tourists.

Am I the only one who sees this as completely ludicrous?

 

[Flatbroke]

I see you point RL and believe you to be correct. They own the property and should be allowed to utilize it as they see fit. Just as we can within reason do to our yards at home.

It is unfortunate however for the hunters that patronized the facility.