(Note: This activity is painted in such a rosy fashion as to appear innocent and 'just trying to help,' rather than as what it really is: the disappearance of more and more access to land by the general public, and the loss of private ownership/the American Dream. The language deception starts with the first word in the title of this article and runs rampant throughout.)

February 7, 2003

By Alan Schnepf, Staff Writer

alan.schnepf@sbsun.com

San Bernardino County Sun

San Bernardino, California

http://www.sbsun.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: carolyn.schatz@sbsun.com  (a puny 100-word limit)

The Wildlands Conservancy (TWC) http://wildlandsconservancy.org  -- "one of the biggest conservation agencies on the West Coast, if not the entire nation" -- plans to add 63,000 more acres to area bought for preservation with BLM. Starting with 1999 purchase of 405,000 acres in the Mojave Desert -- conservancy paid $30 million.

Oak Glen, California - It hasn't been quite eight years since the Wildlands Conservancy incorporated with no paid staff and a single file cabinet for its records.

But since then it has evolved into one of the biggest conservation agencies on the West Coast, if not the entire nation.

It has quietly spent between $85 million and $90 million to acquire 678,000 acres of Southern California wilderness, an area larger than Rhode Island, since 1995. Most of the land is promptly turned over to government agencies with the caveat that little, if anything, be done on it.

And when the Oak Glen-based organization closes a $5 million desert land purchase, expected to happen Monday, it will add 63,000 more acres onto what was already the largest nonprofit land acquisition in U.S. history.

That record-breaking deal was struck in 1999 when the conservancy teamed with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to buy 405,000 acres in the Mojave Desert. The conservancy paid $30 million. The federal government pitched in $15 million.

When the conservancy closes its final purchase with Catellus Development Corp. in June, it will have purchased a total of more than 640,000 acres of former railroad land in the Mojave Desert.

The checkerboard of former railroad holdings in the California desert isn't threatened by encroaching development. But similar land in Arizona has been subdivided into 40-acre parcels. And land experts point out that in California, development can suddenly sprawl in unexpected ways.

"You go back 20 years and there's land in Southern California you probably never thought would be threatened,' said Ed Hastey, who retired from as state director for the BLM and now sits on the conservancy's board of directors.

"Now you're probably paying $5,000 an acre for that land and it is threatened,' he said.

Other projects

Although the desert land acquisition is the conservancy's biggest project, it isn't the only project it's been working on.

The Wind Wolves Preserve it bought in southwest Kern County is the largest nonprofit preserve on the West Coast. Its 97,000 acres cover an area nearly three times the size of San Bernardino, on elevations that range from 640 feet to 6,005 feet.

The conservancy became interested in the land, formerly known as San Emidio Ranch, while it was in foreclosure in 1996. At that point, San Emidio had already been approved for a massive residential development that would have housed 20,000 people.

At one point, developers appeared to be closing in on a discounted purchase of $9 million to $11 million. But the conservancy's negotiators shrewdly announced they would try to buy off the foreclosure note if they had to for $24 million.

The developers backed off, and the conservancy then bought the ranch at the discounted price.

Educational work

But land acquisitions are only part of the conservancy's work.

In a typical year, it buses between 32,000 and 35,000 children, many from low-income, inner-city families, to the preserves in Oak Glen and Kern County for its outdoor education programs. It also works with the Orange County Education Department to send children to nature camps.

Executive Director David Myers said the conservancy wants to include more San Bernardino County children in the outdoor education programs.

Despite the huge acreage and numbers of children, not everything looms large with the Wildlands Conservancy, however.

The group's employees work out of a beautiful, yet modest 2,000-square-foot house behind Los Rios Rancho, an Oak Glen apple orchard nearing its 100th birthday. And that's an upgrade. Until a few years ago, the conservancy was run out of a tiny renovated bunkhouse behind the orchard.

Myers is wary of publicity. On one hand, he knows it can help further the conservancy's mission. But he'd rather do it without having his picture in the paper. He wants to draw attention to his cause, not himself.

"We just have this agreement that work is done, good things are done and then forgotten,' said Myers, who makes about $90,000 a year. "We're just part of good people everywhere doing good things.'

Although its revenue broke the $20 million mark in the 2000-2001 fiscal year, the Wildlands Conservancy still has fewer than 50 staff members, only five of them at the administrative level.

Like the organization, most of its donors prefer to keep a low profile. Myers said about 70 percent choose to remain anonymous.

Some remain anonymous even to Myers, donating money through lawyers who enforce rigid confidentiality agreements. Some of the agreements prevent Myers from even speculating about who donated the money.

Simple philosophy

This philosophy of doing business with minimal complication and fanfare has worked well for the Wildlands Conservancy, according to those who have done business with it.

"We have dealt with other conservation organizations and the Wildlands Conservancy is by far the easiest to work with,' said John Bezzant, vice president of asset management for the Catellus Development Corp. "There's no bureaucracy, and I think they have a greater sense of what they want.'

Bezzant admires the conservancy's refusal to get into "the real estate game.' Some conservation groups buy land, preserve some of it, and then sell some to maintain cash flow, but not the conservancy, he said.

"They're not feathering their own nest through the process,' Bezzant said.

Myers, a 51-year-old Orange County native, believes the lack of bureaucracy and complications is a reason donors trust their money with the conservancy.

"I think that's why so many people are attracted to us,' he said. "The thing we've always got to remember is that we're a cause, not an institution.'

But the conservancy has become an institution of sorts, although it sprung from relatively humble origins an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times.

The ad was placed by Myers, who had moved to the desert around 1985 after focusing his energies on the formation of Chino Hills State Park.

While fixing up a house in Pioneertown, a tiny outpost between the San Bernardino Mountains and Joshua Tree National Park, Myers met a real estate agent who had about 10,000 pristine desert acres.

Their like-minded views of nature and conservation quickly put them on common ground. And soon the agent entrusted Myers with an option to sell the property.

But they didn't want to sell to just anybody. They wanted to sell it to people who would preserve it. So Myers placed the ad, seeking environmentalists with the cash and the will to buy it.

At the time, no one then even imagined what that ad would grow into.

Core group

Thousands of calls poured in. Most were dead ends. But many were not, and that pool formed the core of what would become the conservancy's donor base.

Eventually a few dozen contributors bought the desert land. They formed an agreement spelling out what could be done on the land, namely, not much. Most of it would be free of roads and houses. And where there were houses, there would only be one per 100 acres.

Myers and a handful of other people built the conservancy out of that venture and incorporated it in 1995.

Resources were tight at the beginning. But Myers' ad had put him in touch with a lot of people who were interested in buying land for the explicit purpose of doing very little with it.

During the conservancy's first 15 months of operation, donors chipped in $7.4 million.

The year 1996 was a busy one for the Wildlands Conservancy. At the same time it was maneuvering for the Wind Wolves Preserve, it became interested in Los Rios Rancho after a foreign banker put it up for sale.

Despite drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, the orchard was struggling financially and couldn't make payments on a capital-improvement loan.

All of the prospective buyers were interested in subdividing the scenic property, Myers said.

The conservancy raised the necessary cash and bought it.

Like the previous owners, the conservancy loses money on the orchard. Myers said it costs about $50,000 a year to continue the apple business.

Theresa Law, who opened the first roadside apple stand with her husband in Oak Glen, said the conservancy simply doesn't know what it's doing with the orchard yet.

"They're not farmers, that's all there is to it,' she said. "They think they know how to run it, but they don't.'

Myers said the conservancy eventually will learn how to make it a profitable operation. In the meantime, it has started using organic farming methods and increased wages for some workers.

Although Oak Glen locals are grateful that the Wildlands Conservancy is protecting the orchard, Law said some would like the conservancy to be more personable neighbors.

"They'll send a PR person to our apple growers' meetings, but they're not there themselves,' she said.

In the meantime, the conservancy also will try another run at hundreds of thousands of acres in the Owens Valley. In recent months it was close to a deal with the owner, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, but have been staved off by ranchers who are traditionally skeptical of conservationists.

But even though not successful all the time, the Wildlands Conservancy has still accomplished more than it creators thought it would.

"None of us dreamed it would get this big,' Myers said. "It's unimaginable.'

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