5-MILE STRETCH OF LOST COAST REDWOODS TO BE SPARED
Buyer hopes to one day open up the property to public
The rugged Lost Coast is about to become less forbidding.
A conservation group on Thursday said it planned to purchase a scenic 5-mile stretch of the Northern California coastline from a lumber company to protect it from logging and eventually open it up to the public.
Save the Redwoods League said it agreed to pay nearly $37 million for the DeVilbiss Ranch if it can raise the money by the end of the year.
“This is a piece of California
that inspires,” said Sam Hodder, the league’s president and CEO. “It’s a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The property sits at the southern end of the largely
undeveloped Lost Coast, an unruly landscape untamed by highways and surrounded by timberlands offlimits to the public.
Forested hills on the ranch plunge to isolated beaches. Waves crash into sea stacks. Lush forests teem with green ferns and thick moss. Redwoods and firs up to a century old tower overhead. Two creeks harbor coho salmon and steelhead trout. Grasslands and woods are home to Roosevelt elk, deer, and mountain lions. Habitat supports endangered species such as the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet and Pacific fisher.
Some old-growth redwoods remain on the ridgeline where strong winds snarled their tops, making them less valuable as lumber and sparing them the saw blade.
The property near Rockport, in Mendocino County, is the largest privately owned section of California coastline in the redwood range that runs from Oregon to Big Sur, Hodder said.
It’s being sold by Soper Co., parent of SoperWheeler, which is leaving logging after 160 years of family ties to the business.
“You’d be hard pressed to find 5 miles of coastline for sale without going to a thirdworld country,” said Aric Starck, executive chairman of Soper and a member of the family that owns it. “This one is very unique.”
Logging companies, ranches and other conservation groups also bid on the property, Starck said.
The 5-square-mile property was selectively logged so it doesn’t feature gaping clear-cuts found in some timberlands, Hodder said.
Much of the forest is secondgrowth redwoods 80 to 100 years old and topping 200 feet in height.
Soper is selling its lands because it’s gotten harder to make a profit in a timber industry that has consolidated and faces tougher environmental restrictions, Starck said. Like other multi-generational family businesses, it has run into the problem of having a growing number of heirs with interests outside logging.
The company has sold all but a fifth of the 172 square miles of land it began selling three years ago. It plans to sell all of its acreage by the end of next year.