San Vicente Redwoods is an emerging mixed-use open space in

Davenport, California Davenport is a census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Cruz County, California. Davenport sits at an elevation of . The 2020 United States census reported Davenport's population was 388. Situation Davenport lies along the coast of the Pacific Ocea ...

. It is the largest privately owned parcel in

Santa Cruz County, California Santa Cruz County (), officially the County of Santa Cruz, is a county on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 270,861. The county seat is Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County comprises the San ...

, and one of the largest in California. Since 2011 the land has been owned and managed by the Living Landscape Initiative, a consortium of local and national conservation groups, including the

Peninsula Open Space Trust The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) is a nonprofit land trust headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Mission and Work POST mission is to protect open space on the Peninsula and in the South Bay for the benefit of all. The organization has bee ...

, the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County,

The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in 1951, The Nat ...

, the

Save the Redwoods League Save the Redwoods League is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and restore coast redwood (''Sequoia sempervirens'') and giant sequoia (''Sequoiadendron giganteum'') trees through the preemptive purchase of development rights ...

and the Sempervirens Fund. The $30 million purchase from

Cemex CEMEX S.A.B. de C.V., known as Cemex, is a Mexican multinational building materials company headquartered in San Pedro, near Monterrey, Mexico. It manufactures and distributes cement, ready-mix concrete and aggregates in more than 50 countries ...

was supported in part by the Packard and Moore Foundations. The new name of the park stems from the San Vicente Creek which flows through the main portion of the park. A small exclave of the parcel straddles Laguna Creek to the east.

Land Uses

Conservation and Research

The San Vicente Redwoods land is home to several species of wild animals threatened by the destruction of old-growth forest in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Native animals of particular interest include the

California red-legged frog The California red-legged frog (''Rana draytonii'') is a species of frog found in California (USA) and northern Baja California (Mexico). It was formerly considered a subspecies of the northern red-legged frog (''Rana aurora''). The frog is an IU ...

, a federally listed

threatened species Threatened species are any species (including animals, plants and fungi) which are vulnerable to endangerment in the near future. Species that are threatened are sometimes characterised by the population dynamics measure of '' critical depen ...

, and the endangered Marbled murrelet, as well as mountain lions, peregrine falcons and coho salmon. The endangered Mount Hermon June beetle and

Zayante band-winged grasshopper The Zayante band-winged grasshopper (''Trimerotropis infantilis'') is a species of insect in the family Acrididae. It is endemic to a small portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. Background and description The Zayante band-winged gr ...

are both

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to this area. The Santa Cruz Puma Project uses the area for research on

North American cougar The North American cougar (''Puma concolor couguar'') is a cougar subspecies in North America. It was once common in eastern North America, and is still prevalent in the western half of the continent. This subspecies includes populations in weste ...

. Laguna and San Vicente Creeks provide domestic water to Santa Cruz and Davenport, respectively.

Recreation

The land has more than of gravel roads built by previous owners. It is adjacent to

Big Basin Redwoods State Park Big Basin Redwoods State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of California, located in Santa Cruz County, about northwest of Santa Cruz. The park contains almost all of the Waddell Creek watershed, which was formed by the seismic uplift ...

, the Fall Creek unit of

Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving mainly forest and riparian areas in the watershed of the San Lorenzo River, including a grove of old-growth coast redwood. It is located in Santa Cruz Coun ...

, both managed by the California Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Coast Dairies parcel owned by the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

. The Laguna parcel is adjacent to the

Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve The Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve is a nature preserve of in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, United States. The reserve protects several rare and endangered plant and animal species within an area known as the Santa Cruz Sandhills, an an ...

. A draft public access plan was released in August 2014. A revised public access plan was accepted by the managing partners in April 2018 with a predicted opening date for the space in 2019.

Logging

The new owners of the land plan to log a portion of second-growth forest order to fund the restoration and management the areas designated for recreation. The logging plan was submitted to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in October 2014 for review. The plan calls for relatively low offtake and low-impact methods, and it excludes old-growth forest.

References

External links

Sempervirens Fund: San Vicente Redwoods

Peninsula Open Space Trust: San Vicente Redwoods

Santa Cruz Land Trust: San Vicente Redwoods
{{Protected areas of California Parks in Santa Cruz County, California Santa Cruz Mountains Protected areas established in 2011 2011 establishments in California Parks in the San Francisco Bay Area