A rare time and place to save a piece of original California
A Natural and Cultural History Reserve for Big Sur and the
Santa Lucia Mountains on the California Central Coast

One of America’s most stirring displays of nature can and should be kept intact forever. The Santa Lucia mountain range on the Central California coast is a rare, bold and complex collection of distinctive original California. Great granite cliffs, vast forests, lovely valleys with oak savannahs, mysterious marine coves and tumbling rivers have survived nearly intact into the 21st Century. Within the ecological island known around the world as Big Sur is a beautiful bowl in the mountains, San Antonio Valley the Spaniards called, “The Jewel of the Santa Lucias.” Many of the great communities of native California plants and geology mix, intermingle here in a celebration of the wondrous biological diversity that is California. Now there is a vision forming by citizens who want to protect it so future generations may learn about the unique natural wonders of California. A natural and cultural history reserve in the Santa Lucia Mountains of California’s Central Coast is proposed.

People who want to rest and renew their inner self come to Big Sur for its tranquility, beauty and serenity. It looks like California did before modern civilization.

Ventana, Window to the past The Big Sur coastline of the Santa Lucia Mountains flanks the Ventana Wilderness, named for the Spanish word for “window.” The “ventana” here is formed by the juxtaposition of a suite of conical mountain peaks, made resistant to erosion by their granitic and ancient metamorphic rock structure. It is said that this “window to the west” formed the gateway for the spirits of the Esselen people as they left this earthly existence. The Esselen occupied a relatively small territory that included several of these “cones.”

The neighboring Salinan people occupied a much more expansive territory. It includes the area encompassed by Fort Hunter Liggett, the Hearst Ranch and Piedras Blancas.Always more numerous than the Esselen, members of the Salinan Nation are cautiously reemerging from centuries during which their cultural heritage was necessarily driven “underground.”

	From the pristine beach coves of Piedras Blancas, where the Great Northern Elephant Seals, once considered extinct, have made a resounding comeback in the front yard of the Hearst Castle – to the pastoral mountain Valleys of the Ventana back country, an opportunity and an imperative merge.

Raw and rugged at one angle, at another they smoothly lay out in sensuous glens.
	More than half of all the native plants of this remarkably diverse state have a home in this mountain range. Some valleys have hundreds of native plants that are on lists of endangered, and threatened plants. And, more are found with each new study.

All the great trees that migrated from the arctic north and desert south, millions of years ago gather here to make their last stand. This is where the great botanists of the 19th Century came to discover trees – the Coulter – Douglas – and their specimens filled the conservancies of the world.	Santa Lucia Fir – the rarest and most beautiful trees in the world came to be the crowning grace of Europe’s most renowned arboretums. But, the real exhilaration was only to be felt by actually coming here to witness the meeting of the magnificent Ponderosas, Sugar Pines and Redwoods.

Rare creatures Sea Otters, once thought extinct, were rediscovered here. Condors and American Bald Eagles now roam the Big Sur skies above the Santa Lucias. The morning fog is filled with songs of sea lions.

 

An array of avian species occur in the region: California condor, bald eagle, golden eagle, prairie falcon, peregrine falcon, Cooper’s hawk, sharp-shinned hawk, Bell’s vireo, yellow breasted chat, purple martin, and the highest concentration of oak savanna specialists in the nation, including yellow-billed magpie, acorn woodpecker, Nuttall’s woodpecker, white breasted nuthatch and western bluebird, according to an annual Breeding Bird Survey conducted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This concentration of prime oak savanna habitats is of national significance.

The Monks of New Camaldoli Hermitage and other nearby religious retreats at Tassajara, and spiritual study centers, have a very protective feeling for the area. They all consider it priceless because of its unique qualities for the pursuit of contemplation. People from around the world come here to contemplate because it is so powerfully natural. Wilderness advocates consider this region to be uniquely suited to the study of nature, and the earnest pursuit of renewing the spirit by experiencing nature. More than a milllion people every year come here to savor that uniqueness.

Status of this land Much of the area has become public land. Nearly 200,000 acres of the Los Padres National Forest is the Ventana Wilderness and the Silver Peak Wilderness. 50,000 more acres are proposed as additions to the Wilderness. California has eight state parks in the area.

These lands represent another window on one of the quintessential landscapes of our California heritage that is all but lost elsewhere. Valley oak woodlands in California’s Central Valley are disappearing at the hands of development. Yet, some of the most sumptuous valley oak woodlands to be found in the state have been protected from land conversion by Fort Hunter Liggett. Unlike the lands currently protected by the National Forest, the lands currently proposed for protection include topography more suitable for land development and agricultural conversion than the more rugged lands of the Wilderness areas and Forest. Similar lands in this region are daily being converted to vineyards or housing.