Quick Take
Cotoni-Coast Dairies, which opened to the public on Aug.15, is a beacon of hope, writes Sara Barth, executive director of Sempervirens Fund. It’s proof of what communities can achieve when they work together. Here, Barth outlines the more than a decade of work it took to reach the opening, including an inside story of getting then-President Barack Obama to designate it a national monument in 2016. “I felt elation – to the point of giddiness – as well as a deep sense of relief,” Barth writes.
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On Aug. 15, I stood on the windswept slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains just outside Davenport to celebrate a monumental achievement – the public opening of Cotoni-Coast Dairies, an ecological gem that hosts the region’s newest trail network, including 9 miles of hiking trails.
The opening took decades to achieve – the triumphant result of relentless pushing by people, organizations and political leaders – creating an opportunity for all to experience the landscape’s deep redwood canyons, rolling coastal grasslands and majestic views of the Pacific.
I felt elation – to the point of giddiness – as well as a deep sense of relief. Nothing about this effort has been easy, and the outcome was far from certain.
The opening ceremony was a who’s who of Santa Cruz County, reflecting how much it matters and the breadth of people who achieved it. Former U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo told the crowd of several hundred how in 2016, she cornered then-President Barack Obama on Air Force One and persuaded him to issue the proclamation that designated the land a national monument.
Chairman Val Lopez, leader of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, spoke movingly of the legacy of the Cotoni people who sustainably stewarded the land for millennia and of whom, tragically, there are no known descendants.
He reminded the crowd that Cotoni is pronounced “Cho-tow-knee” in the tribal language and asked for recognition of the sophisticated culture that continuously occupied this landscape for more than 7,500 years until forcibly displaced by Spanish colonizers.
Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, Rep. Jimmy Panetta, state Sen. John Laird, former Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty and Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley also have been champions for this spectacular landscape. It took a political village, backed by thousands of unsung heroes in the community who wrote letters, signed petitions, testified at hearings and did the hard work that got us to the opening day.
Sempervirens Fund, where I serve as executive director, worked for over a decade to preserve this land, including spearheading the campaign to get the national monument designation. Land conservation can be a contact sport that is not for the fainthearted.
We took a lot of hits along the way from some who disagreed with our approach. But we persisted, knowing it was overwhelmingly supported by the majority and unquestionably the right thing to do.
The Cotoni-Coast Dairies opening was a victory and a welcome beacon of hope. A shimmering counterpoint to the ugliness of today’s national politics, illustrating the promise of what can be achieved when community members and government leaders listen to one another and work collaboratively to get through tough, complex issues.
Again, land conservation is never quick or easy. It never is. It takes time and requires playing a long game. Sempervirens Fund, established in 1900, has been working for 125 years to protect coast redwoods in the region.
We’ve been highly successful, which is why an extraordinary emerald necklace of redwood parks (Big Basin, Butano, Henry Cowell, Portola Redwoods and Castle Rock) is draped across the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Yet, the job is not done.
Preserving land is a team sport – a prolonged relay race. Vocal community leaders as far back as the 1990s killed a series of harebrained proposals to turn Cotoni-Coast Dairies into a nuclear power plant or a luxury housing development. Thankfully, the nonprofit Trust for Public Land purchased the land, transferring it to the federal Bureau of Land Management in 2014.
Sempervirens Fund then grabbed the baton and went after the national monument designation, figuring a presidential stamp of approval would give it the highest possible conservation status and attract public and private funding.
Good that we did. When Congress recently considered its own harebrained proposal to sell off public lands, national monuments were considered too precious, and too popular, to be put on the chopping block.
Next in the conservation relay came the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, which focused on identifying and preserving Cotoni-Coast Dairies’ rich archeological sites. They were joined by the Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship, which built the 9 miles of new trails for the public to enjoy and has set its sights on future expansion of the trail network.
The relay race at Cotoni-Coast Dairies is far from over.
For over a century, the land was privately held and operated as a dairy. Grazing and other destructive practices scarred the landscape, forcibly displacing many native plants and animals just as thoroughly as the Indigenous people were. Like Chairman Lopez, I feel a deep obligation to help heal those wounds and right those wrongs.
Today, a new and existential threat to Cotoni-Coast Dairies comes from catastrophic wildfire, and alternating drought and flooding, wrought by climate change. This is why Sempervirens Fund is focused on reducing fuel loads and restoring the streams that run from the crest of the Santa Cruz Mountains, starting on our adjacent San Vicente Redwoods conservation property, down through Cotoni-Coast Dairies. When coho salmon and steelhead trout are again regular visitors to this landscape, I will know we have succeeded.
I feel proud of what we achieved at Cotoni-Coast Dairies – not just personally, or in my organization, but in the success story that is our community. Over many decades, people raised their voices, took action and cared enough about this land to fight over the best way to protect it. Every step along the way, those heated discussions and diverse perspectives resulted, ultimately, in a better outcome.
Now we need the next generation of community members to take the baton.
It’s not hard to make a difference. Get your hands dirty in on-the-ground restoration projects; work up a sweat maintaining the trails; help monitor the plants and animals returning to the landscape; volunteer with one of the conservation organizations that is involved; speak out when there are opportunities for public comment on how the land should be managed.
Conservation doesn’t just happen. In fact, it never ever happens without people just like you. And I guarantee that if you get involved, you too will experience the deep satisfaction, the joy, that comes from leaving the world a bit better off.
Sara Barth is executive director of Sempervirens Fund. She joined Sempervirens in 2016, after 12 years at The Wilderness Society. Prior to that she served as an environmental advisor to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in Washington, D.C. At Sempervirens Fund, she has led the evolution of California’s first land trust into a conservation organization working to ensure coast redwood forests in the Santa Cruz Mountains thrive for generations to come, especially in the face of climate change.