Tejon Ranch

A coalition of environmental groups and a developer have agreed on a landmark plan to conserve 90% of the largest chunk of privately owned wilderness remaining in Southern California. The agreement ends years of debate over the fate of an untrammeled tableau of mountains, wildflower fields, twisted oaks and Joshua trees in the historic Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles. The developer, the Tejon Ranch Co.

How heartening it is, the sound of environmentalists and developers harmoniously agreeing on new construction. That's what first came to mind when the Tejon Ranch Co. and such environmental heavyweights as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council jointly announced plans to both build on and preserve swaths of the 270,000-acre ranch that straddles Los Angeles and Kern counties.

Want to build a housing development in a wetland, or maybe a refinery on the coast? Good luck with that. Conservationists now excel at protecting our natural treasures. We've mastered public relations, sharpened our lobbying and built war chests to pay for armies of scientists and lawyers to build the case that developers shouldn't be allowed to grind up our wild lands. But developers are veterans of the game too, and they win their share of fights.

Environmentalists who brokered a landmark agreement with a developer to set aside 240,000 acres of California wilderness are facing the ire of colleagues within the conservation community who contend that they, as one detractor put it, "sold out to the forces of destruction." The pact's potential effect on the California condor has prompted the harshest criticism, and has brought personal attacks as well.

The president of California's largest private game preserve announced Friday that he would ban the use of lead bullets on the 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch because he's convinced that the ammunition is poisoning the endangered California condor. Some leading environmentalists hailed the voluntary ban, saying that they hoped it would provide momentum for a statewide prohibition on the bullets. Robert A. Stine, president and chief executive of Tejon Ranch Co.

A coalition of environmental groups says it will withdraw its opposition to development of the sprawling Tejon Ranch if the builder agrees to set aside about 380 square miles in the Tehachapi Mountains as wilderness. The coalition hopes its offer persuades developers to scale back their plans on the 270,000-acre site and to more than double the amount of land to be preserved. The coalition now wants to save 245,000 acres -- a swath of land bigger than Chicago and Philadelphia combined.

Developers of the largest chunk of privately owned wild lands remaining in Southern California and representatives from the nation's most powerful environmental groups gathered at a special summit last spring to consider a deal. Under it, environmentalists would forgo legal challenges if the proposed 23,000-home Centennial development on Tejon Ranch were reconfigured to more than double the amount of land set aside for a preserve.

Re "Environmental coalition digs in," Nov. 6 North of Los Angeles, beyond the unfettered urban sprawl of Santa Clarita, just south of the Tehachapi Mountains and the Tejon Ranch, lies a little-known, undeveloped Golden Valley. Up the dusty dirt roads north of Highway 138, among the sparsely populated land parcels, you can see hawks, jackrabbits, ground squirrels, Mohave green rattlesnakes, owls and many other desert creatures in this unique paradise of open grassland and Joshua trees.

Re "Tejon Ranch as a model," Opinion, May 19 Two official environmentalists soft-pedal the opening of a sensitive ecological habitat to negotiated development as a model for preserving what is left of the natural world in California's despoiled land and airscape. Years ago, Italian architect Paolo Soleri invented a concept of providing for increasing populations on decreasing land space while enhancing urban living and preserving natural habitats. He coined the word "arcology" for his vertical cities amid mountains, forest and wildlife refuges.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are in "crisis mode" because at least five endangered California condors have been found with lead poisoning in the weeks leading up to a statewide ban on lead bullets. The birds started turning up sick about a month ago during random trappings at Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge in Kern County's southwestern San Joaquin Valley foothills. One bird died during treatment at the Los Angeles Zoo. Since there are only about 34 of the endangered birds in Southern California, officials called the number significant.