The Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve exists thanks to the gracious partnerships and collaborations we have with land owners, managers, and organizations that provide us with access to their lands and programatic support. Thanks to our land partners, we are able to support everything from experiential field visits and trips for undergraduate classes, undergraduate internships and research projects, graduate and faculty research, and community education and stewardship events. Through our partnerships and programs, we are able to train and teach the next generation of environmental leaders, while also providing our partners with scientific data, logistic and coordination support, and on the ground stewardship to our partners. Below is a list of some of our land partners and collaborators as well as programs the Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve helps support.
Cotoni-Coast Dairies (Bureau of Land Management)
Cotoni-Coast Dairies (CCD) is a 5,800+ acre National Monument managed by the Bureau of Land Management’s California Central Coast Office. CCD stretches along Highway 1 from Laguna Creek to the southeast towards Queseria Creek to the northwest, bordered mostly by Highway 1 to the south, up into the edges of Bonny Doon to the north. CCD hosts a variety of habitats, from coastal prairies, coastal scrub, six different ocean draining subwatersheds and streams, freshwater ponds, oak woodland, mixed conifer forest, stands of Monterey pine and cypress, and redwood forest. CCD is also host to a number of sensitive species, including steelhead trout (federally threatened) and coho salmon (federally endangered), California red-legged frog (federally threatened), black salamander (CA species of special concern), California giant salamander (CA species of special concern), and San Francisco dusky-footed woodrat (CA species of special concern).
Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve and the University of California System has an Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Bureau of Land Management which allows for facilitating faculty and graduate student research, student internships, experiential learning field trips for classes and courses, and other UC supports stewardship and biological surveys. Currently, Cotoni-Coast Dairies is closed to the public, so Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve’s MOU and relationship with Bureau of Land Management allows us to access areas and sensitive resources with the intent of providing scientific data, research, and stewardship to the National Monument. Current projects we have assisted with at Cotoni-Coast Dairies includes monitoring for amphibians and reptiles including California red-legged frog at breeding pond sites, general mammalian community surveys using game cameras and live trapping of small mammals, grassland and scrub bird point counts and monitoring, and aquatic benthic macroinvertebrate surveys and stream monitoring across the six main subwatersheds.
For more information about Cotoni-Coast Dairies, please visit the Bureau of Land Management’s website for the latest information and updates.
San Vicente Redwoods (San Vicente Redwoods Conservation Partners)
San Vicente Redwoods (SVR) is close to 9,000 acres of primarily redwood, mixed conifer, northern maritime chaparral, and shaded riparian cooridors stretching from the top of Ben Lomond Mountain along Empire Grade Road, to its southern border with Cotoni-Coast Dairies. San Vicente Redwoods gets its namesake from the San Vicente Creek watershed that comprises its eastern border, strethcing to the Big Creek subwatershed of Scott Creek to its northwest. SVR hosts a variety of sensitive species including steelhead trout (federally threatened) and coho salmon (federally endangered), California red-legged frog (federally threatened), black salamander (CA species of special concern), California giant salamander (CA species of special concern), San Francisco dusky-footed woodrat (CA species of special concern), and marbled murrelet (federally endangered). In addition to sensitive wildlife, SVR hosts a variety of sensitive plant species as well, including our regional endemic Santa Cruz manzanita (Arctostaphylos andersonii; California Rare Plant Rank: 1B.2). In 2020, around 99% of SVR was burned by the CZU megafire, and since Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve’s implementation in 2022, we have been assisting the SVR Conservation Partners with monitoring the recovery of plant and animal communities onsite.
SVR is managed by four non-profit land trusts, including Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), Sempervirens Fund, Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, and Save the Redwoods League. Collectively, these four land trusts are known as the San Vicente Redwoods Conservation Partners. Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve has an MOU with POST and Sempervirens Fund, who are the main land deed/title owners, although we regularly interact with and collaborate with all of the SVR Conservation Partners. Our MOU allows us to coordinate and facilitate class field visits and lectures, class projects, internships, and faculty and graduate student research. Currently, we have assisted the SVR Conservation Partners with numerous projects including bird point counts, monitoring and implementing continuous forest inventory plots along shaded fuel breaks implemented by the Conservation Partners and onsite foresters, San Francisco dusky-footed woodrat midden surveys along the newly implemented public trail system, as well as conducting biodiversity surveys for amphibians, reptiles, fish, mammals, birds, and invertebrates at the newly incorporated in SVR parcel, Filice Ranch.
San Vicente Redwoods is currently open to the public via its public trail system accessible by parking lot and trailhead along Empire Grade Road. For more information about San Vicente Redwoods and trail access, please follow the links below to each organizations website for more information:
Land Trust of Santa Cruz County’s San Vicente Redwoods Trail Website
Sempervirens Fund San Vicente Redwoods Informational Website
POST’s San Vicente Redwoods Hiking Guide
Save the Redwoods League’s San Vicente Redwoods Informational Website
Santa Cruz Mountains State Parks (California State Parks)
California State Parks is the largest land owner and manager for conservation, recreation, and ecosystem health in the Santa Cruz Mountains region. Currently, Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve has coordinated and conducted internship programs and classes at number of regional State Parks including Año Nuevo State Park (and UC Reserve), Bean Hollow State Beach, Big Basin State Park, Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell State Park, Gazos Creek State Beach, Henry Cowell State Park, Pigeon Point Lighthouse State Historical Park, Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve, Quiroste Valley Cultural Perserve, Waddell State Beach, and Wilder Ranch State Park. Each park has a wide variety of habitats, sensitive species, recreational access, and land management challenges that makes our local State Parks valuable outdoor classrooms to explore and learn in.
California State Parks in the Santa Cruz Mountains region provides a plethora of opportunities for students to connect to nature via publically available trails and beaches, while also providing areas where students can learn about sensitive species conservation, forest management, prescribed burns, cultural restoration and archaeology, recreation and its impacts, agroecology along many of our State Parks managed agricultural areas, and much more. Some programatic highlights Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve has been able to assist State Parks with includes monitoring wetland accretion plots at Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve, monitoring American crow and common raven populations along the northern central coast from UCSC to Pescadero, and have classes learn about conservation and land management practices at a variety of State Park locations.
For more information on California’s State Parks Santa Cruz Mountains region, follow the links to each park you are interested the Santa Cruz District Park website.
Swanton Pacific Ranch (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo)
Swanton Pacific Ranch is around 3,200 acres of redwood forest, riverine corridors of the Scott Creek watershed, and coastal prairie and scrub, situated between Cotoni-Coast Dairies at its southeastern border, Highway 1 at its southern border, Big Creek Lumber at its northwestern border, and San Vicente Redwoods at its northeastern border. Swanton Pacific Ranch was donated to Cal Poly SLO to teach students how to manage a working ranch and forest, and maintains a history of teaching Cal Poly students applied land management and conservation. Due to the 2020 CZU megafire, much of Swanton Pacific Ranch had been burned and many of its facilities damaged or lost. However, by partnering with the Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve, Swanton Pacific Ranch has played a vital role in servicing jointly managed Cal Poly and UC courses and internships by combining Cal Poly SLO’s knack for teach applied land management with UC Santa Cruz’s world class research.
Currently, the Santa Cruz Mountains Reserve and Swanton Pacific Ranch have been teaming up to implement a summer internship program that combines Cal Poly SLO and UC Santa Cruz students in learning about stream and forest management and health. Additionally, Swanton Pacific Ranch is the host site for a newly implemented experiential learning course designed to combine 12 Cal Poly SLO students with 12 UC Santa Cruz students in order to learn about applied land management, conservation, and field methodologies and research in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Central Coast regions.
For more information about Cal Poly SLO’s Swanton Pacific Ranch, please visit their website.