The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County announced recently that it will enter escrow to acquire the 1,000+ acre Santa Barbara Ranch, widely known as Naples, on the Gaviota Coast. If completed, the purchase would end nearly 140 years of land use conflict over one of California's most pristine and contested stretches of coastline. The Surfrider Foundation applauds this effort as Naples is a key component of our 30+ year efforts to help protect the entire Gaviota Coast.
Santa Barbara Ranch is now within reach, but announcing the purchase is just the start of the work, not the finish. Nearly 140 years of development pressure left this land with a complicated legacy and $16 million still stands between the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County and closing. Shaping a preserve that does right by this land’s rich natural resources, cultural resources, and the public will take time.
Naples has been fought over since 1888, and that history doesn't disappear at closing. Buying the land ends the threat of development; it does not instantly undo more than a century of plans, approvals, lawsuits and disturbance layered onto the property. Additional information from the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County:
Closing day is not opening day. After closing escrow, the Land Trust will lead a minimum two-year natural resource assessment and planning process, working with tribes and stakeholders, before the long-term vision for the preserve is set and put in place.
Protection comes first. The primary goal is to protect the land's extraordinary natural resources. Cultural access for Chumash tribes and bands, and carefully considered public access, will be planned in ways that support that goal.
We need to fully understand the land before we decide its future. A thorough inventory of habitats, species, cultural sites, water and infrastructure will guide every decision.
Tribes will be part of this from the start. Dos Pueblos Creek and the Chumash village communities at its mouth are central to this landscape. Engagement will be respectful and ongoing.
The public will have a voice. Stakeholders and community members will have opportunities to weigh in as the preserve concept takes shape.
Access will come, done safely and thoughtfully. Trails, nature-based recreation and other ways to experience the preserve are part of the vision, once they can be done without harming the land. This land waited nearly 140 years for protection. Taking two more years to plan it well is how we honor that.
Statement from Bob Keats, founding member of Surfrider Santa Barbara:
Since the inception of the Santa Barbara chapter of the Surfrider Foundation in January of 1992, the chapter has played a crucial role in conserving open space on the coastal terrace of the eastern Gaviota Coast, between the Goleta urban boundary and El Capitan State Beach; and this coastal terrace includes the property known as Naples.
In April of 1992, the chapter formed its Gaviota Coast Task Force, which included chapter members and other environmentalists who wanted to work with Surfrider to protect the eastern Gaviota Coast from development and to conserve this bluff-top land as a public park.
The eastern Gaviota Coast contains the last significant stretch of relatively undeveloped and unprotected rural coastal land in Southern California, and it contains a cultural landscape that included two Chumash communities, Kuya'mu and Mikiw, on either side of what is now known as Dos Pueblos Creek.
The Surfrider Santa Barbara Chapter successfully fought a 10-year battle to stop the construction of a golf course on a property that is now called Paradiso, between Eagle Canyon Creek and Naples. The golf course would have opened the eastern Gaviota Coast to development, and the conservation of Naples (Kuya'mu) is a consequence of the chapter's victory over the golf course project. The chapter was also instrumental in stopping a luxury housing development proposal for Naples, and it stopped development in and adjacent to Eagle Canyon Creek.
All Surfrider members can be proud of the long effort by numerous Santa Barbara chapter activists to conserve the landscape of the eastern Gaviota Coast.
Learn more in this SB Independent story and this KEYT news report.