Saving something you love isn’t always easy.
Take the Gaviota Coast, for instance, whose rolling hills and coastal bluffs have been a developer’s dreamland for decades.
So, what do you do?
“The answer is that you fight like hell to keep the coast clear,” said Phil McKenna, chairman of the Gaviota Coast Conservancy’s Land Use Committee and a longtime member of the GCC Board of Directors.
McKenna has spent the past several decades helping develop strategies to deal with this.
“I like to say that the Gaviota Coast is where developer money, developer capital comes to die,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
Taking a New Approach
In what might be called GCC 2.0, the Gaviota Coast Conservancy has announced that it will shift its mission from a defensive approach that focused on opposition to development on the Gaviota Coast to one that emphasizes stewardship of its natural resources and support for rural agricultural activities.
According to McKenna, the plan is intended to “preserve the rural character of Gaviota by protecting and enhancing its varied and unique natural and cultural resources, agricultural productivity, and by enhancing public recreation and access consistent with the capacity of its resources.”
Titled “Vision for the Gaviota Coast,” the 50-page document provides an overview of the critical values of the coast west of Goleta, and offers the rationale for the shift to a stewardship role.
Vision for the Gaviota Coast
The document includes detailed action plans for 13 specific areas ranging from the abandoned oil tank farm on UCSB land near Ellwood Mesa to Vandenberg on the far western end.
Other project areas include Naples and the sensitive coastal bluffs west of The Ritz-Cartlon Bacara, State Park rehabilitation and restoration, county-owned Baron Ranch, various parts of the Gaviota Creek watershed, and supporting the Nature Conservancy at Dangermond Preserve, which surrounds Point Conception.
Each includes proposed actions that the GCC recommends, identifies project needs, provides background information regarding the project, and gives an assessment of the benefits resulting from it.
Several projects focus on acquisition. Others will involve working with existing properties to acquire conservation easements designed to maintain their rural character, improving public access when possible and supporting restoration where needed.
Using the Hammer
Much of the GCC’s success during the past several decades has been because of the conservancy’s adherence to strict regulatory and legal guidelines to stop inappropriate development along the coast where possible and mitigate its impact to the fullest extent possible when needed.
The GCC was founded in 1996, arising from concerns from a number of individuals and local environmental organizations about the long-term future of the coast given growing developer interest.
The conservancy championed the creation of a national seashore on the Gaviota Coast in the early 2000s. That effort failed when the National Park Service deetermined that the coastline was suitable for inclusion in its system, but the George W. Bush administration ruled it was not feasible because of the opposition of area landowners, including those in Hollister Ranch.
Landowner opposition centered on maintaining “local control.” The conservancy took them at their word, pivoting toward monitoring all development projects proposed for the area. The effort has been successful, enough so that just knowing the GCC would oppose an inappropriate project kept many of the developers at bay.
“There were several hedge funds who came forward with development proposals,” McKenna said. “We had long conversations with them.
“We just told them the regulatory and legal burdens of developing on the coast are fearsome and that was their future in Santa Barbara County. So they better sharpen their pencils and make sure they got their numbers in order because it’s going to be a long and burdensome process.”
Shifting Directions
During the past several years, partly as a response to criticism regarding this aggressive approach but more importantly to the group’s success in protecting the Gaviota Coast from development, the GCC has begun shifting away from litigation toward the more proactive stewardship role described in its “Vision” document.
Partly this is because of the GCC legal efforts, but also through its influence in the political arena, specifically the participation of several conservancy board members in the five-year effort to draft the county’s Gaviota Coast Plan.
The plan is the formal Local Coastal Plan, which will guide development of the Gaviota Coast for the next several decades, recognizing the coast’s unique environmental and rural character.
Need for Experienced Leadership
Recognizing the need for experienced leadership to handle the challenges posed in the conservancy’s shift toward conservation and restoration, the GCC hired Doug Kern as its first executive director in 2019.
Kern served as the director of conservation for the Mendocino Land Trust for five years before joining the GCC, and before that served for two decades in a similar role for the Presidio of San Francisco.
Both involved management of beach and forested properties, complex restoration projects, and working closely with the other landowners to provide public access while protecting sensitive natural and cultural resources.
Kern said he remembers fondly one of his most important projects, which consisted of planning, design and development of a different kind of construction to bypass a 9-foot waterfall on a tributary of the Big River upstream from Mendocino that created a barrier for passage for coho salmon.
The project used 25 tons of rock imported from a nearby quarry to create step pools that would allow the salmon to continue upstream.
Key Focuses
“While GCC has been known for preventing inappropriate development projects,” Kern said, “the GCC board has begun to understand that permanent protection of critical Gaviota Coast parcels was necessary to complete their work.
“My role is to see that vision start to become a reality in the near term.”
Kern ticks off a number of things he sees as critical to his job.
“First, we want to be collaborative,” he said. “That means working with the agencies and landowners where we can to assist them with issues they may not be able to fund themselves. We want to support local ranchers and property owners to keep them on the land.”
Kern emphasized that it’s critical to maintaining the rural character of the Gaviota Coast.
“Third, it is absolutely essential that we encourage development of conservation easements and educate owners about their value,” he said. “We also want to promote restorative processes by providing grants designed to model future practices.”
Example projects include funding for large-scale regenerative agriculture planning, a grant to a vermiculture project to identify and streamline permitting issues, and funds for innovative, new coffee production on the Gaviota Coast.
Challenges Ahead
Perhaps the biggest challenge of all is to persuade willing owners that the GCC has the experience to take on active management of a part of the Gaviota Coast or oversee the type of restoration that the “Vision” document proposes.
“There’s no question that that this is one of GCC’s major challenges,” Kern said. “I think we’ve put the pieces in place to make that happen.”
Kern said he sees his role as more of an educational one, slowly investing in projects that support the GCC’s new vision and through that building a resume that will help the organization be as successful in its restoration efforts as it has been in protecting the coast from the type of development it was born to fight.
— Noozhawk outdoor writer Ray Ford can be reached at rford@noozhawk.com. Click here for his website, SBoutdoors.com. Follow him on Twitter: @riveray. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.