Southern California’s largest pristine environment preserved and protected by new partnership
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. – The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County and The Nature Conservancy have partnered with Vandenberg Space Force Base to execute a $15 million conservation easement over the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve.
The Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve, a 24,341-acre nature preserve located along the Gaviota Coast, is the largest stretch of undeveloped coastline in all of Southern California detail the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County.
The new conservation easement will preserve and protect the dynamic window into the natural past in perpetuity through legal prohibitions on property development and securing financial support through the Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program.
“With one deal—one wildly beautiful and complicated deal—we nearly doubled the number of acres
under easement by the Land Trust. This collaboration with TNC and DoD is a win for science, culture,
and climate resilience and a model for future permanent legal land protection,” said Meredith Hendricks,
Executive Director of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County.
These partners have been working on the conservation easement since 2004 and the creation of the Dangermond Preserve took decades of collaborative work and a $165 million philanthropic donation to The Nature Conservancy from Jack and Laura Dangermond among other financial backers, many here in Santa Barbara County.
“Securing a conservation easement on the Dangermond Preserve has been a critical part of our plan to
place enduring long-term legal protections across one of the most biologically diverse regions in the
world,” said Mark Reynolds, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Point Conception Institute, a
conservation research institute based at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve. “The extraordinary
ecological richness of the Preserve provides scientists a rare look at how wildlife and natural systems can
adapt unfettered to climate change, sea level rise, and other pressing issues for California and the world.
We are grateful to our partners at the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County and to the Department of
Defense for their commitment to conservation, as well as our donors, for their tremendous support in this
shared mission.”
Since 2019, The Nature Conservancy has hosted over 200 scientists from more than 40 institutions as well as 1,150 local students detail the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County.
According to the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County and The Nature Conservancy, the new partnership will allow them to continue to develop unique learning opportunities for those in the local community as well as facilitate the broader study of increasingly rare pristine natural environments into the future.
