You Can Direct Your Donation to a Specific Fund

McMahan Family Stewardship Endowment

As we complete more projects and conserve more lands, the demands on our stewardship resources will grow. The McMahan Family Stewardship Endowment was created by the McMahan family in 2006 to provide critical ongoing support for managing the conservation and community values of our cherished properties.

Good land stewardship is about managing for long-term health and resiliency. Big Sur Land Trustt’s properties include an extensive, extraordinary portfolio of diverse habitats that span rare sensitive dunes, majestic redwood forests, expansive oak woodlands, grasslands, and river corridors. We own and manage 24 properties covering 4,600 acres throughout Monterey County. Our flagship properties include Glen Deven Ranch (860 acres), Mitteldorf Preserve (1,060 acres), Marks Ranch (73 acres), Martin Dunes (125 acres), Arroyo Seco Ranch (1,700 acres) and Carr Lake (73 acres). In addition, we are responsible for annually monitoring a vast array of conservation easements totaling almost 7,000 acres on 35 properties. Our stewardship team needs your help to make sure these lands continue to be places where people and nature can thrive for generations to come.

We are certain that our responsible proactive land management practices lessened the catastrophic impacts of the 2016 Soberanes Fire at Mitteldorf Preserve and Glen Deven Ranch and the 2020 River Fire at Marks Ranch.

Efforts like our extensive eucalyptus removal project at Glen Deven greatly reduced fire impacts for our neighbors as well. Equally as important, diligent maintenance of all our properties meant that they all can be called into service to support fire-fighting efforts as needed. For instance, thousands of fire crew members and their equipment were housed at Marks Ranch for a few weeks during the River Fire in 2020 and for months throughout the long battle during the 2016 Soberanes Fire.

Also during the Soberanes Fire:

• Arroyo Seco Ranch served as the main heliport and mobile retardant station for the entire length of the firefighting efforts.
• Before the fire swept through and caused major damage, Mitteldorf Preserve provided access for crews fighting in the back country of the Santa Lucia and Joshua Creek Preserves and adjacent wildlands.

In a typical year, our extensive holdings demand continual attention and care. After being faced with fire followed by winter’s flooding in 2016 and 2017, the challenges of restoration and repair increased exponentially at Mitteldorf Preserve and Glen Deven Ranch. And we are facing similar challenges on the 73 acres that burned at Marks Ranch.

With your support, our stewardship team can increase its ability to restore our properties when necessary; proactively care for all the landscapes we depend on; and improve the quality of life within our diverse local communities.

Donations to the McMahan Family Stewardship Endowment will increase the amount we can draw from the fund to help cover typical stewardship expenses each year. Land stewardship activities range from invasive plant management, restoring redwoods and riparian areas, monitoring sensitive plants, building and maintaining trails, facilities and road management, and conservation easement annual monitoring and reporting.

As conservation landowners, Big Sur Land Trust has made a promise of caring for the rich conservation values of our lands in the public trust.

Land Protection Opportunity Fund

It’s impossible to predict when opportunities will arise, but we track properties – sometimes over decades – that we’ve identified as key landscapes that have known conservation values. We also receive inquiries all the time. If we can’t act swiftly to secure a property, the opportunity can soon disappear!

With our donors’ generosity, Big Sur Land Trust has conserved over 40,000 acres throughout Monterey County since 1978. Because of our supporters’ responsiveness as acquisition opportunities have been presented, residents of Monterey County and visitors to the region are able to enjoy expansive parks and open space, spectacular scenic vistas, and robust recreation. We’ve protected a vibrant network of healthy functioning woodlands, wetlands, rivers, grasslands and other places where people and nature thrive. Incorporating working lands, parks, trails, gardens, cultural and historic sites and recreation areas as part of green infrastructure networks greatly enhances the quality of life for all of us. BSLT needs your help so we are ready when an opportunity arises to conserve a vital property!

Big Sur Land Trust is the only local land trust that works throughout all of Monterey County, and we work solely with willing sellers.

We’ve been working in the Carmel Valley watershed; in the coastal dunes; in the Sierra de Salinas mountain range that rims the southern Salinas Valley; the Gabilan mountain range to the east; and, most recently, in an urban area in Salinas, the county’s largest city.

Our approach is multifaceted. We acquire properties to conserve them for a variety of reasons, particularly if they are under some sort of threat. We may continue to manage them, conserving the land in perpetuity; or we may transfer a property to a park agency to manage for both conservation and public use. Understanding that people are part of the landscape, we work to conserve both wild places and areas where people make their living. We acquire easements that ensure long-term conservation, while maintaining private ownership and specific activities such as ranching. As seen with our first urban acquisition of 73 acres at Carr Lake, our approach continues to evolve, expanding to new communities and new ways of connecting conserved
lands to people.

In April 2020, Big Sur Land Trust acquired and conserved 83.5 acres of old growth mixed evergreen woodland, chaparral and grassland habitat at Patriarch Ridge, adjacent to the Land Trust’s Mitteldorf Preserve in Carmel Valley. The roadway along Patriarch Ridge serves as an important connection and emergency access route between Mitteldorf Preserve, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Joshua Creek Ecological Reserve and adjoining back country. Patriarch Ridge is also a very important part of the Esselen Tribe’s sacred lands and includes the upper watershed divide between Williams Canyon and the Garzas Creek drainage.

If you wish to designate your bequest to a specific purpose (e.g. the McMahan Family Stewardship Endowment or Land Protection Opportunity Fund), please contact us for suggested language to ensure we can honor your wishes.