FRESNO DESK - A group of conservationists have purchased two historic San Joaquin Valley ranches in the foothills to the North of Los Banos and East of Gustine. The purchase price was nearly $19 million. The ranches will be part of a regional private sector plan to protect open space from encroaching urban sprawl.
The land sale is Central California's largest private land purchase in the State's history.
In the 1880's the oak woodlands, streams and cattle grazing lands were the expansive Romero Ranch, which with the Simon Newman Ranch amounted to an area twice the size of San Francisco.
The purchases are an integral stem in a conservation strategy of the Nature Conservancy's known as the 'Mount Hamilton Project.'
The Hamilton Project will preserve open space near the outskirts of Livermore to Hollister, 120 miles South.
It is the aim of the project to continue buying large tracts of land and development rights for the next generation or so, Merced county and other Bay Area regions.
Steve McCormick, executive director of the Nature Conservancy in San Francisco told reporters Monday, 'Unless we are able to secure these places, they are going to be gone. We will lose the landscape quality of California.'
The Hamilton deal was possible because of a $6 million loan to the Nature Conservancy from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also provided $1.3 million. And the other $11.7 million came from Nature Conservancy donors across California and the organization's reserves.
The Nature Conservancy expects to take ownership by October. Currently, the ranches are owned by Wells Fargo Bank who actively solicited a buyer for the land committed to conservation. Dale Irwin, a Wells Fargo vice president said 'We are pleased that the Nature Conservancy stepped forward to acquire this land with the intent to safeguard it for the appreciation of future generations.'
Wells Fargo obtained the ranches under its foreclosure power when in the early 1980s as low crop prices and over speculation turned the farm economy sour.
The bank then acquired both ranches from the Los Banos ranching family, the Wolfsens. The family still runs Wolfsen Inc. in Los Banos, once was one of the largest cattle operations in the state, owning more than 1 million acres with a history dating to the 1890s.
Wolfsen told reporters he is pleased that an environmental group bought the ranches. 'If they handle it the way I understand, which is to continue to graze and to allow hunting...I think it's great.'
The land deal will save the open spaces from urban development through an alliance between ranchers and environmentalists.
Both groups have a lot in common. Both see subdivisions and freeways as eating-up valuable arable farm land. Environmentalists also want the West's open lands kept free of development to preserve wildlife, air quality and watersheds.
'Around here, the people who've heard about this deal, they think nothing but good,' said Frank Thompson, ranch manager for the Simon Newman Ranch.
'This is one of the best working cattle ranches going,' he said. 'We don't need shopping centers out here.'
