Partnership conserves 937 acres of redwoods: San Mateo County includes 320 acres, will become part of Butano State Park

The San Mateo County parcel totals 320 acres of mature second-growth redwoods, critical watershed and wildlife habitat, according to a press release. Gazos Creek runs through the parcel and is home to salmon and trout and the property is one of only seven critical habitat areas in the region for the endangered marbled murrelet, according to the release.

That land has not been harvested in at least the 50 years that the McCrary family has owned it, nor will it be harvested again: the plan is to eventually incorporate the land into adjacent Butano State Park. Justin Garland, a project manager for POST, said the park is assessing opportunities for increased public access of the property.

The other 617 acres in the deal, a property known as Valencia Creek, are located in Santa Cruz County. POST acquired that property from the Cal Poly Corporation and is permanently protecting it from development. Moving forward, that property will be owned and managed by Big Creek under a working forest conservation easement, the first to be implemented in collaboration with a timber company in the region. The deal allows Big Creek to secure a reliable, sustainable and ecologically appropriate supply of timber for its sawmill in nearby Davenport, according to the release.

“We are honored to partner with the McCrary family to protect significant areas of redwood forest from development and support responsible, sustainable timber production. It’s a win-win arrangement that benefits the forest and shows just how far conservationists and timber companies have come,” Walter T. Moore, president of POST, said in the release.

One thing conservationists and timber companies have in common is they both want to protect forestland from development.

“The [Valencia property] provided timber for us for decades and we were really interested in seeing it maintained as a piece of forestland to grow timber in perpetuity and we wanted to see it protected from subdivision and development,” said Janet McCrary Webb, president of Big Creek.

Garland also spoke to the shared interest among conservationists and lumber companies to preserve forestland and described the partnership between Big Creek and POST as “unprecedented.”

“We’re all aware that for decades the conservation community and timber community in the Santa Cruz Mountains have been at odds so I think this is a really unprecedented, or monumental moment where we’re able to come together around a shared vision and recognize the shared threat of fragmentation and the loss of forestland to development and get a complicated project done that works for everyone,” he said.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

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