State Vows to Buy, Preserve Coal Canyon

The Wilson administration announced plans Wednesday to purchase and preserve land that officials and activists alike have long regarded as the most environmentally valuable stretch of unprotected open space in Southern California--Coal Canyon, along the border between Orange and Riverside counties.

Buying the canyon, or even a significant part of it, will allow the state to connect the Chino Hills State Park and the Cleveland National Forest. That would assure the viability of wildlife in the park by creating a continuous natural corridor through a region that is at the center of some of the most intense development pressure in the region.

Despite the state’s insistence that the acquisition is a certainty, the owner of the land says no deal has been formalized. Moreover, protection of the land would not remove all environmental threats to the area.

If the corridor were sealed off by the construction of new homes and businesses, which is in the works, wildlife experts warn that 50% or more of the species now in the state park would eventually die off. The wildlife common to the national forest and the park includes mountain lions, mule deer, coyote, bobcats and golden eagles.

“Coal Canyon is the most significant wildlife corridor in Southern California, if not the state,” said Resources Secretary Douglas Wheeler. “It’s been the state park’s No. 1 priority for acquisition, and we now have the funding to assure complete protection of the most important habitat in Coal Canyon.”

According to Wheeler and Transportation Commission Chairman Robert Wolf, the Coal Canyon acquisition is possible because of transportation money made available at the behest of Gov. Pete Wilson.

“This is being done at the urging of Gov. Wilson, who wanted a way to aggregate lands in large enough parcels to protect entire ecosystems and not just pretend that by buying one acre here and there you were accomplishing environmental mitigation,” said Wolf.

Wolf said the transportation commission will vote today to allocate $10 million toward the purchase of Coal Canyon land and Bair Island in San Francisco Bay, which contains over 3,000 acres of tidal marshes that are home to more than 120 bird species and a dozen types of mammals.

However, the announcements by Wheeler and Wolf seemed to come as a surprise to the current owner of most of the Coal Canyon property, the St. Clair Co. of Newport Beach, and the conservation group, the Trust for Public Lands. The trust has been trying to broker a deal, using money from the state and other sources, to acquire Coal Canyon.

“We don’t have a signed deal,” a representative of the trust said Wednesday. “TPL is working with the developer. We know the state has been looking to provide money for this.”

David Hudson, a vice president of St. Clair, said Wednesday that no one from the Wilson administration had contacted St. Clair about the acquisition funds.

“We have talked to the Trust for Public Lands, but as of yet we don’t have a deal,” Hudson said.

He said the company was proceeding with plans to build 1,550 homes in the canyon and expected to submit those plans for approval by the city of Anaheim in January. But even after submitting those plans, Hudson said, the company would be willing to entertain offers to purchase the land.

“I’m happy to sit down and talk to anyone about the purchase of the property,” he said, “be it a public agency or private developer.”

But state officials insisted that the Coal Canyon land would be preserved through a deal that would combine the $6 million in state money with nearly $5 million from other sources, along with agreements that would expedite the development of environmentally sensitive property that St. Clair owns in nearby Gypsum Canyon and Yorba Linda.

News of a possible deal was greeted with surprise and relief Wednesday evening by two environmental leaders who have long fought to preserve Coal Canyon.

“We are pleased with the Wilson administration’s recognition of the importance, not only of this corridor, but of corridors in general,” said Claire Schlotterbeck, president of Hills for Everyone, a group that helped create Chino Hills State Park and has fought for the preservation of Coal Canyon.

“I commend the Wilson administration working for funds for this, and it’s got to happen,” said Constance Spenger, president of Friends of the Tecate Cypress, an environmental group committed to saving the rare cypress in Coal, Gypsum and Fremont canyons. “They absolutely must save Coal Canyon.”

Both leaders did express initial reservations, however, about packaging the deal with agreements to expedite development on St. Clair land in Gypsum Canyon and in Yorba Linda.

The Yorba Linda land is rich with the rare songbird called the California gnatcatcher, Schlotterbeck said. “We have concerns about the wildlife,” she said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not signed off on expediting development on either site, a service official said. Typically, any disturbance or killing of endangered species on those sites requires federal permits.

State officials and conservationists have been working since the early 1990s to protect land in the canyon. Over the past few years, about 700 acres of mountain lion habitat have been acquired, as well as a rare stand of Tecate cypress.

But the vital Coal Canyon connecting link between the 12,000-acre state park and the 472,000-acre national forest has remained elusive.

The Riverside Freeway crosses the canyon, separating the park from the national forest, and Caltrans would like to widen the freeway by three lanes. Wildlife biologists, however, say many creatures, including mountain lions, have not been afraid to go back and forth, using culverts and an underpass.

Buying the land on both sides of the underpass and restoring its natural vegetation “would set a global precedent,” concluded a team of scientists from around the country in a report on the biodiversity of the region.

The 1996 report referred to the region encompassed by the park and the national forest as “containing biological resources of worldwide significance.”

Yet purchase of the St. Clair property would still leave a number of outstanding challenges to the local ecology.

Along with St. Clair’s plans to develop Gypsum Canyon, another developer owns 32 acres of land slated for commercial construction in Coal Canyon, and there are several parcels of private land that could be developed on the northern and northwestern edges of the park.

Moreover, with the population of western Riverside County expected to grow by 1 million or more by 2020, there is increasing pressure to build roads through the park that would link residential neighborhoods in Riverside County with jobs in Orange County.

Times staff writer Deborah Schoch contributed to this report.

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Preserving 2 Ecosystems

The Wilson administration plans to purchase two wildlife areas in California to ensure their preservation. The state would purchase Coal Canyon Biological Corridor in Orange County and Bair Island in San Francisco Bay.