Entrusting the Land to Our Future
A group of nature lovers recently got the chance to hike through a redwood forest on private property. How did this opportunity come their way? The answer: through a land conservation easement. The property owner is the Frey family. The holder of the conservation easement is the Inland Mendocino County Land Trust, a local non-profit based in Ukiah.
There are a number of benefits associated with placing land in a conservation easement. Tax advantages accrue to the landowner and easement provisions assure that his or her property will remain in its current condition, either as open space or agricultural use, in perpetuity. The land may be sold or passed on to heirs but the easement remains intact. The public also benefits as easement lands retain their traditional rural character, and, in some cases, such as the Frey’s, afford citizens opportunities for access, usually through guided hikes.
One such walk occurred on a recent autumn morning high in the Russian River watershed near Tomki Creek in Redwood Valley. Organized by local Sierra Club hike coordinator Yvonne Kramer and led by Daniel Frey, the three-mile hike began at the Frey Winery grounds and followed a winding trail northward. Thirty participants of all ages hiked through mixed woodlands resplendent with bright fall foliage. The destination – a meadow surrounded by easement-protected second growth redwoods with an old growth specimen nearby.
“The Frey land is a very special environment because it gets fog which makes these redwoods the easternmost stands in the county,” explains Yvonne Kramer, who brought along three grandsons.
Mendocino County Inland Land Trust President Phyllis Curtis explains, “These Redwood Valley redwoods were at risk as former property owners planned to remove them. The Freys wanted to save them so they purchased the land and we worked with them to create our first conservation easement.”
A second easement with another inland property owner now is in the works. Inland trust board members, including Curtis, are dedicated to preserving open space and agricultural traditions in our County’s inland valleys.
Besides the two easement efforts, several years ago Trust members raised more than $11,000 to assist the Coast-based Mendocino Land Trust preservation of an old redwood stand at historic Ridgewood Ranch just south of Willits. Besides the two-acre old growth grove, the easement includes a larger seventeen-acre stand of second growth. Like the Frey easement, the Ridgewood easement agreement provides public access via guided walks at designated times during the year.
“I look forward to arranging more hikes on conservation easement lands in the future,” says the Sierra Club’s Kramer. “We got a lot of local people from Redwood Valley but also people from the Coast, Cloverdale, Ukiah and Willits. It felt like a neighborhood walk.”
Phyllis Curtis explains, “While the Frey family and the Golden Rule Church members allow public access, it’s not a requirement for a conservation easement. The main goal is, first and foremost, to preserve the land.”
Curtis’s life experience as an L.A. native was the catalyst for forming the inland trust in 1998.“Los Angeles was a garden of Eden when I was growing up in the 1930s,” she recalls. “My grandfather had ten acres of fruit trees – orange, lemon and grapefruit – and I remember the sweet fragrance as I walked down the orchard rows.”
By the 1950s, Los Angeles had irrevocably changed and Curtis believes that poor planning led to its ruin. She says, “My grandfather’s orchard was paved over with a subdivision and, do you know, they didn’t leave one single tree standing?”
After Curtis married her doctor husband Hugh, they kept moving northward to try to recapture a little piece of Eden. They arrived in the Ukiah Valley in 1957.
“I started the Land Trust because I couldn’t bear to see what happened to Los Angeles happen in our beautiful valley,” says Curtis.
The inland group is seeking new easements and has a special interest in collaborating with farmers and ranchers. Curtis believes that preserving prime ag land is the key to saving our inland valleys for the future. She points to news reports that indicate a precipitous decline in both the quality of the earth’s soils and the acreage of the world’s farmland.
She says, “Agriculture has become a precious commodity,” noting that 40% of the world’s soils has become seriously degraded and globally, 1/3 of farmlands has been lost to erosion, just in the past forty years.
As a consequence of unbridled development, countries are seeking to grow their food elsewhere. China and India have bought up African land to plant crops to feed their own people.
Curtis concludes, “If we’re going to feed ourselves here in Mendocino County in the future, we need to preserve our ag land.”
—Dot Brovarney
