‘Well-kept secret' Highway 1 beach property will be conserved
Peninsula Open Space Trust announced Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement to pay $10 million for the 195-acre oceanfront property at the junction of Highway 1 and Highway 84. POST officials say their intention is to keep the mix of bluffs, sand dunes and marsh from being developed and expand public access at the site.
Known by some in the area as San Gregorio Ranch, the land is currently owned by a family trust and managed by a couple of ranch hands who have generally allowed people to come and go for a small fee. Beach walkers, fishermen and clothing-free sunbathers are among the regulars. There's also a perennial herd of cattle on the property, and two small dwellings.
'It's a pretty well-kept secret,' said EkOngKar Singh Khalsa, senior land transaction manager for POST, on a recent visit to the ranch. 'You have to know when it's open. You have to know what number to call.'
The Palo Alto-based Peninsula Open Space Trust, which is in the business of preserving land, pursued the purchase of San Gregorio Ranch after its owner, Walter Bridge, died and the future of the property became less certain. Bridge had donated a conservation easement to POST decades ago, seeking to limit development on the property, and the purchase agreement, POST officials say, cements that objective.
In the short term, POST officials say they don't plan to make major changes to how the place is run. Visitors will be able to continue going to the beach, whether to lay in the sun, marvel at the vast stands of American dune grass or check out the 'driftwood condos' — play structures that people have built out of beached wood, sometimes two stories tall.
Over the long run, POST officials foresee easier and greater access to the gated property. In addition to welcoming people to the beach, they say the bluffs could become part of the route of the California Coastal Trail, the 1,200-mile chain of trails that's being pieced together along the coastline.
POST is also hoping to eventually transfer the property to a permanent steward, in keeping with its mission of seeking out lands for state and local entities to manage for public use. San Gregorio Ranch borders San Gregorio State Beach, to the south, making the California Department of Parks and Recreation a candidate for future ownership. State Parks has been supportive of POST's acquisition and in communication about the property's future.
'We're always looking at what the best long-term options are,' said Gordon Clark, president of POST. 'We're trying to set this property up for ecological health and meaningful public access.'
Under the agreement between POST and the Bridge family trust, the sale of the ranch won't be finalized until May of 2026, giving both parties additional time to prepare.
POST has begun a fund-raising campaign to collect $14 million to cover the purchase of the land as well as future maintenance and planning expenses. The organization has been working to protect lands on the San Francisco Peninsula and South Bay since 1977. The group has been part of the longtime effort to keep the San Mateo County shoreline largely free of development.
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The mute swan population in New York has stayed steady at around 2,000 to 3,400 birds. Charisma matters with invasive species On the East Coast, mute swans have been around since before the turn of the last century. They were first imported as ornamental livestock for zoos, parks and estates. Some of California's mute swans likely came in the same way. Weaver, the California waterfowl coordinator, said others were likely brought in the past few years to chase away Canada geese that have increasingly become a nuisance at parks and golf courses. 'People were buying these (swans), and they were just throwing them out there,' she said. Weaver noted their owners didn't do the responsible thing and clip their wings to keep them from flying off. That's hardly surprising. It's no easy task to grab a hissing 25-pound swan, big and angry enough to swamp a kayaker. So with nothing to stop them, the birds flew to nearby marshlands and began reproducing. 'Here we are, not very many years down the road, with a population that is really increasing at a rapid rate,' Weaver said. So far, California's wildlife agency hasn't enacted a mute swan eradication plan similar to the one it started almost immediately — and publicly promoted — a few years ago, after nutria first started turning up in the San Joaquin Valley. Nutria are similarly destructive feeders on aquatic plants. The South American swamp rodents also burrow holes in levees, posing a threat to the state's flood-control and water-supply infrastructure. Dave Strayer, a retired invasive species expert with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, said he's not surprised state officials haven't been as aggressive with the beautiful mute swans, given the uproar over killing them in other states. He said research has shown that when it comes to invasive animals, charisma matters. The more attractive a problematic non-native species is, the less appetite there is to wipe it out. Stayer gave an example: Few complain about killing common nonnative rats, but you're apt to get death threats at even the suggestion of wiping out ecologically harmful feral cat colonies in the same habitats. He noted that no one has ever complained about efforts to eradicate one of his research subjects, the nonnative zebra mussels that have also invaded California. 'I never had even one person stand up for zebra mussels and say, 'No, these are beautiful, elegant God's creatures' and so forth,' he said. Few wetlands and too many mute swans Supporters of the swan-killing legislation say reducing the number of mute swans should be fairly easy since the giant white birds are easy to spot, identify and kill. Their size and the color and shape of their bills also reduce the risk they'll be confused with other protected bird species, they say. California's native tundra and trumpeter swans would still be protected and illegal to shoot if the bill becomes law. Despite their undeniable beauty, Weaver, the state waterfowl coordinator, sees mute swans similarly to nutria. The swans pose too great a threat to native species reliant on the few wetlands left in California, which has lost at least 90% of the habitats to agriculture and urban sprawl. 'They don't move around the state all that much, and they really like the Delta-Suisun Marsh area, so it's still easy to handle the issue,' Weaver said. 'The longer we wait, it won't be.'
