Magazine June 2009

THE LAST FRONTIER How efforts to build the largest master-planned community in — 23,000 homes and a resort along the grapevine—have subdivided environmental groups

By Edward Humes Company and its investors want to construct the largest master-planned Between the asphalt sprawl of the community California has ever basin and the fertile seen. This is the rough equivalent of flatlands of the Great Central Valley, dropping a Boulder, Colorado, into where the Okies flocked during the the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Dust Bowl days and The Grapes or a couple iterations of Harrisburg, of Wrath was set (and banned), a Pennsylvania, down into Yosemite. vast and surprising wilderness still thrives. After years of preliminaries, an initial environmental impact statement Broad pastures, granite-studded and a habitat conservation plan— hillsides, and icy blue mountain by Macduff Everton federally mandated studies that must lakes all lie within an hour’s drive be hashed out before a patch of grass of L.A. smog and concrete, hidden be at once humbled, enthralled, and can be disturbed—were released in plain sight as traffic snakes by on saddened by vistas that in years past for public comment in January. The the one major freeway through the defined California and the West by documents were pushed out the door Tehachapi Mountains. Ancient oak their plenty rather than their dearth. three days after Barack Obama took groves offer cool shade; thick stands The United Nations has recognized office and before new administration of piñon pines beckon in the breeze; the region encompassing much of the appointments had been made, despite forests of twisted Joshua trees grope ranch as one of 25 irreplaceable hot the new president’s memorandum to toward the clouds. spots of biodiversity in the world—a designation reserved for just 2.4 The landscape has barely changed percent of the earth’s surface. for thousands of years, which is why more than 80 rare or endangered The ranch’s owners want to build species continue to prey, roam, roost, a city there. Called Centennial, it flower, and rear their young here. would have 23,000 homes and at The nearly extinct California condor least 64,000 residents. They also comes to forage in small numbers plan to create a resort and shopping where long ago colonies nested in this malls, along with industrial parks, last Southern California wilderness, cargo terminals, and a system for this blank spot on the map 18 times delivering water no one in this the size of Manhattan. There is no drought-ridden state can spare. other place like it in California and Where cattle grazing and hunting few to rival it on earth. To stand on a have been the main activities for windswept hill at Tejon Ranch is to the last 150 years, the Tejon Ranch delay all environmental reports so themselves from contention by the Center for Biological Diversity, they could be reevaluated. signing the conservation agreement. whose representatives have called the agreement “a classic greenwash.” Normally this would have created It was a brilliant move by the This is the sixth group, the one that an uproar among California Tejon Ranch Company, a publicly opted out of the negotiations with environmental organizations. traded corporation with Wall Street Tejon. “If we can’t save a pristine Instead there has been silence. That’s money behind it—Third Avenue piece of wilderness that the United because a number of the biggest Management being the biggest Nations considers to be one of the environmental players in the state— investor, with nearly 30 percent of 25 most biologically important Audubon California, the Sierra Club, the company’s shares and a seat on on earth,” says Peter Galvin, the and the Natural Resources Defense the board. Sums as monumental as group’s 44-year-old cofounder and Council among them—that once the landscape are at stake. The raw conservation director, “what can we opposed the project as an ecological land alone was reportedly valued at save?” disaster are now working with the $1.5 billion in 1999, and if developed Tejon Ranch Company. Facing the as envisioned, the ranch would be On paper this scruffy outfit— likelihood of years of litigation, the worth up to 30 times that amount, a hodgepodge of 62 lawyers, owners of the Tejon Ranch last year perhaps much more when all is said biologists, activists, and ordinary agreed to something so extraordinary and done. More than 37,000 jobs folks—shouldn’t have a prayer that it fractured the environmental could be added to a struggling local against the political, economic, and opposition. They offered to dedicate economy. Completing the project legal resources behind SimCity. With up to 90 percent of the ranch land to would demand, on average, the offices scattered around the country, conservation, giving environmental construction of a new house every the center is headquartered in Tucson groups equal control of the property. eight hours, 365 days a year, for 20 in a cavernous, somewhat cluttered In one stroke, the single largest years. office in a former market, which the development in state history would staff must vacate one month each also become the single largest To those who see progress in a year when the landlord puts on the wilderness preservation project in bulldozer’s blade and beauty in city’s annual gem show. The space the state. the taming of nature, Tejon Ranch comes rent free and features a pair of is an irresistible plum: 270,000 rather dusty giant purple crystals that “This is one of the great conservation contiguous acres lying 60 miles from are too heavy to move. Compared achievements in California history,” downtown Los Angeles, a straight with operations like the Sierra Club, said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney shot up Interstate 5—the Golden the center’s $6.5 million budget is and director of the NRDC’s urban State Freeway transformed into the shoestring, but its biologists and program, when the deal was ultimate driveway to the ultimate attorneys are considered leaders in announced. “This agreement is the bedroom community. The Mount Everest of conservation.” Times admiringly described the plan as “Playing SimCity for Real.” There was a catch, however. Those The investors know the economic same environmental groups would downturn won’t last forever, and they have to drop public opposition to want their plans and permits ready the resort, the city, the industrial to roll as soon as the market picks parks, and all other development up. Sacrificing up to 90 percent of on the remaining 10 percent of the the ranch—more than half of which ranch, no matter what form it took. was too rugged or remote to ever be The greens would have to remain on developed—just may be the quickest the sidelines instead of digging into way to make that city a reality. those recently released reports. Five of six environmental organizations Standing in the path of this future that had been allied to fight the Tejon Ranch is a relatively little- ranch development have removed known environmental group with a small budget and outsize ambitions, by Mike Reagan their fields, particularly in the areas carte blanche to cut down ancient of marine and climate environmental trees on ecologically sensitive public law. lands. Its latest target is the most threatening source of environmental During the past 20 years, the Center damage, extinctions, and habitat loss for Biological Diversity has won yet—global warming—and Tejon close to 90 percent of its 500 cases. Ranch is ground zero. Though few outside the rarefied world of environmental litigation are The organization’s goal is to familiar with the center, evidence augment its usual battle over specific of its work is ubiquitous. Almost endangered species issues—in every species that since 2001 had Tejon’s case, the California condor— been grudgingly listed by the Bush with a broader campaign to show that administration as imperiled—a total projects such as Tejon are precisely of 63—has been protected because the sort of development, built far the center used the courts to force by Macduff Everton from existing cities and requiring the issue on a recalcitrant White residents to “leapfrog” through the House. The group’s most recent and hitting hard,” Suckling likes to say, outlying area to get to work, that widely heralded victory came when explaining the center’s technique must stop if we are to get serious it compelled the Bush administration of burying officials with flurries of about slowing climate change. It to grant the polar bear endangered lawsuits, investigations, petitions, argues that state and federal laws species protections and to specify and press releases. “It’s about should force developers at Tejon— global warming as the extinction jabbing the other guy over and over and elsewhere—to quantify their threat—a landmark finding. and over, before he has a chance contribution to global warming to recover.” Their aggressive use and then do everything feasible to Since the Endangered Species Act of science and lawsuits to compel eliminate that impact, from installing was passed in 1973, 70 percent of compliance with the Endangered solar roofs to mandating zero- the plant and animal species given Species Act and other environmental emission vehicles for residents. If the protection under the law have been laws has defeated off-roaders and developers refuse such mitigation, listed because of efforts by the offshore oil drillers, developers and then the project should be scuttled, center. More than 100 million acres Detroit automakers, adversaries, argues Kassie Siegel, the intense of wildlands have been preserved and an alphabet soup of government young attorney who runs the center’s as habitats for these endangered agencies from Washington State to new Climate Law Institute (and who species—an area more than twice Washington, D.C., and as far away dons her “Frostpaw the Polar Bear” the size of all the national parks in as Okinawa. suit for the occasional protest). the contiguous 48 states combined. It is no exaggeration to say that the The center’s work has transformed modern American environmental overgrazed, trampled, and befouled movement has been reinvented by the federal lands that had been all but left center, and especially by two of its for dead into lush riparian forests. founders and leaders: Peter Galvin, Thousands of miles of ocean waters a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife nearly stripped of life have been Service owl expert, scientist, and made off-limits to dragnets, bringing self-described mystic who devises endangered sea turtles and depleted intricately ruthless environmental fisheries back from the brink of campaigns; and Kierán Suckling, extinction. One court case pursued an engineering student turned by the center halted logging not in a philosopher who combines an single habitat, not in a single forest, encyclopedic knowledge of animal but in every national forest in the species with a political-opposition Southwest—all 11 of them—after it researcher’s instinct for the other was shown that the feds were routinely side’s jugular. “Boxing’s not about breaking the law by giving loggers by Macduff Everton Fighting leapfrog development has choices: cancel the development or climate crisis in the first place. The become a priority for the center. modify it to minimize greenhouse conservation agreement, whatever Although California under Governor gas emissions by building in its merits, doesn’t change that. All Arnold Schwarzenegger has led the superefficient appliances, energy- those houses, all those commutes, nation in adopting global warming efficient construction, passive and all those emissions, are still on the legislation, a much older state law on active solar energy systems, and drawing board. There’s no good the books, dating back to 1970 and requirements for green transit. Local reason to put a new city there.” signed by Governor Ronald Reagan, and state governments ought to is the center’s weapon of choice discourage leapfrog developments, Tejón is Spanish for “badger,” a against greenhouse gas emissions keep wilderness areas intact, and creature once plentiful near the and the urban sprawl that helps favor new developments next to ranch. Legend holds that Spanish generate them. The law, called the existing urban areas rather than soldiers exploring the area found a California Environmental Quality worsen the sprawl that contributes dead badger at the mouth of a canyon, Act, featured the deceptively simple to climate change through longer and the name stuck. The land had but sweeping requirement that commutes and higher energy, water, long been coveted for its fertility, local and state governments must and wastewater demands. The judge beauty, and strategic location. It was examine and reduce or eliminate hearing the case agreed that the occupied by the Yokuts and several the negative environmental impacts city had failed to properly consider other Native American nations, of development projects—from the impact on the environment and was claimed by Mexico in the 19th new cities to new shopping malls— overturned approval of the project. century and carved up into four land- before approving them. The goal grant ranchos, then became U.S. was to address traditional water The Black Bench strategy was so terrain after the Mexican-American and air pollution—the poisoning of successful that Attorney General War and California’s admission to rivers and the smokestack smog and Jerry Brown filed a similar suit the Union. against the fast-growing county of soot that were the bane of the 1970s. Fort Tejon was established in Global warming was not on anyone’s San Bernardino, forcing a settlement specifying that it must consider 1854 at the urging of a storied radar then and is not mentioned in the California military man, explorer, act, but the language was designed greenhouse gas emissions in every future construction project. Under road builder, and land baron, to embrace new environmental Edward Fitzgerald Beale. Among threats as they emerged. Still, no threat of suits from the center and the state, most major jurisdictions in many firsts, he surveyed for the one ever thought to apply the act transcontinental railroad, brought to the greenhouse gas emissions of California are now doing the same— a sea change in how developers in news to Washington that gold had development projects until the center been discovered in California, tried to in 2006. California are required to handle the threat of global warming. Stopping and started an experimental U.S. In what Siegel promised would be the a 1,400-home project like Black Army Camel Corps at Fort Tejon, first of many such cases, the center Bench will have no measurable importing 25 of the desert animals went to court to stop a controversial effect on global warming, Siegel from Egypt and Tunisia. As head leapfrog development called Black says, but how about ten projects? Or of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (he Bench, which would put more than a hundred? No one project will make was also lead Indian negotiator and 1,400 homes in a wild desert area or break climate change, just as no surveyor general of California and outside Banning, at the foot of the one electric, hybrid, or hydrogen car Nevada), Beale helped manage San Bernardino Mountains. The will. It is the cumulative effect of reservation land for local tribes. He center accused the city of Banning, millions of clean cars—or millions also snapped up the four ranchos to which had approved the project, of houses—that can alter the path of form the present-day boundaries of of failing to consider the increased global warming. Tejon Ranch. greenhouse gas emissions it would The Beale family kept the ranch for cause. Citing wildfires, drought, and “We have to start somewhere” is Siegel’s mantra. “Tejon Ranch 57 years, then sold it for $3 million in energy shortages as consequences 1912 to a consortium of investors led of global warming in California, is iconic. It is exactly the sort of project that has contributed to our by Harry Chandler, who later became Siegel argued that the city had two publisher of the . The Chandler family’s Times Mirror that the condors be classified as question of property rights. They say Company converted the Tejon Ranch “experimental nonessential,” a they have bent over backward to set into a publicly traded corporation. designation that would probably aside significant land for a nature In the 1970s, it was listed on the doom the species, according to preserve and open space. They have American Stock Exchange, where Galvin. The company reached an invited environmental groups to its stock prices soared to more than agreement with the fish and wildlife help oversee the conserved lands. $600 a share in the mid- 1980s as service to put the lawsuit on hold What more must they do to satisfy interest intensified in the company’s while the ranch owners seek various the center? “The fundamental core plans for massive development. permits for the project, including an values of the ranch from the get-go are Drought, a bad economy, and a real “incidental take” permit that would conservation and good stewardship,” estate downturn stymied those plans, give the ranch the authority to alter says Barry Zoeller, vice president of causing the stock to tank. In the early condor habitat and to “harass” and corporate communications for the 1990s, the ranch owners positioned remove condors. ranch. themselves as stewards of the land. Biologists from the U.S. Fish and An estimated 20 additional species Much of the Tejon Ranch project Wildlife Service and the National protected by state and federal laws is to be in semirural Kern County, Audubon Society had frequent access live on the ranch, as do 60 rare where the county seat is the city to the ranch for research and wildlife types of plants and animals with no of Bakersfield. Civic leaders there management as part of the California legal protections. A number of these have complained that the Center Condor Recovery Program, one of organisms exist nowhere else in the for Biological Diversity is going the most ambitious and successful world. One-third of the oak tree too far and should not try to block projects ever attempted for staving species in California can be found jobs and revenue in the region. A off a species’ extinction. The on Tejon. The biological abundance columnist with The Bakersfield last 22 condors in the wild were and diversity is the reason the area Californian, Marylee Shrider—in captured in 1987. Bred in captivity, that Tejon Ranch falls within, the an article reprinted on the Tejon their offspring were “re-wilded” California Floristic Province, is Company’s Web site—summed beginning in 1991—an expensive considered by the United Nations up these sentiments, deriding and painstakingly slow process that to be a biological diversity hot spot. the center’s “saber rattling” and is still going on. The ranch contains the last wildlife “unwarranted sense of entitlement” corridor that links the coastal, low as environmental extremism. “They As the condors began their comeback, desert, high desert, and mountain want, they want, they want...,” the ranch management changed regions of the state, making Tejon Shrider wrote of environmentalists. course yet again. In 1996, the unique and, from a conservationist’s “Tejon Ranch Co. must develop, or current CEO, a San Diego developer viewpoint, vital. This is why the not develop, the land according to named Bob Stine, took over, along center opposed the development and their plan or it’s off to court they’ll with new board members who had withdrew from negotiations with the go.” similar real estate backgrounds and ranch, and it is also why the other ambitions. Then Times Mirror sold environmental groups stayed in Early on, and despite its reputation its controlling interest, and Third negotiations and ultimately cut a deal. for being uncompromising, the Avenue Management entered the Everyone’s priority was keeping the center had participated in meetings picture. Planning to transform the ranch in one piece and preserving with the Tejon Ranch Company, the ranch into a city and resort began. that biological crossroads. The only Wildlands Conservancy, the Sierra Cooperation with the condor question was, Which would best Club, Audubon California, the recovery program was curtailed. achieve that goal—years of litigation Natural Resources Defense Council, Under the Endangered Species and confrontation or a compromise? the Planning and Conservation Act, portions of the property had League, the Endangered Habitats been designated condor “critical For those who own Tejon Ranch, League, and others. At the time, habitat,” areas deemed vital to the the people who have invested in the Tejon Ranch Company had species’ survival. The Tejon Ranch the vision of a new city and resort offered to place 100,000 acres of the Company sued in 1997, demanding complex set amid windswept hills 270,000-acre ranch in a conservation that the protections be lifted and and oak groves, the issue is a simple trust in order to blunt environmental groups’ opposition, but Galvin build on 30,000 acres—the whole placed in a conservation easement, pronounced that insufficient. Much Centennial project. Just move it to to be administered by a nonprofit of the offered acreage was remote, a less sensitive area, away from the run by a 12-person board—four rocky, or high ground, with little grasslands slated to be bulldozed. environmental representatives, value for conservation and unusable They had a site mapped out near the four ranch representatives, four for development, he said. From his edge of the ranch that could actually independents—and initially funded perspective, the ranch was giving increase the profit potential because by the ranch. up nothing, and the coalition of it would be less remote and easier environmental groups agreed to build on. In exchange the ranch This is where the center parted to present Tejon Ranch with a would have to cancel the resort company for good with its former counterproposal. complex and canyon mansions near allies. The Sierra Club, the NRDC, the condor areas, the most important and the other groups have focused After months of back-and-forth, habitat on the ranch. The investors on what would be saved, its epic size the factions had gathered in the could still make a mint, and nature and scope, on the notion that the deal back room of Il Fornaio restaurant would fare far better. Here was the serves the greater good. The center in Pasadena. On one side of the kicker: The amount of permanently activists and attorneys argue that it big table sat ranch executives with preserved land had to be much is a grave mistake—as well as a sign their corporate allies and attorneys. more than the 100,000 acres already of weakness and fear—to surrender Across the water glasses and baskets offered. It had to be 245,000 acres— the right to object to a development of bread sat the loose-knit group of about 90 percent of the entire with such enormous potential to environmentalists, many of whom property, the minimum needed to harm species and landscapes. No seemed content, as Galvin recalls it, keep the various habitats and wildlife matter how much land is saved, to let him play the “bad cop” in this corridors intact. “Nothing short of Galvin maintains, it cannot make drama. When it was his turn to make that will be acceptable,” insisted up for establishing Centennial in his pitch, Galvin said he believed Galvin, adding that the alternative what is now grasslands and putting that the best possible outcome would would be spending the next 15 years a resort in critical lakeside condor be to drop all development plans or more in litigation. habitat. The endangered birds and and create a permanent wildlife other species will inevitably suffer, preserve and public park. Tejon The offer was rejected, as Galvin had perhaps catastrophically, he argues, Ranch Company would go down in expected. Not long after, the center and the state will lose credibility as history alongside the Rockefellers stopped participating in the meetings a champion of “smart growth” and a and Carnegies for its environmental and negotiations, all of which had foe of climate-damaging, resource- generosity and commitment, he said. been subject to a confidentiality hogging sprawl. Generations would take joy in this agreement at the Tejon Ranch beautiful wilderness and honor the representatives’ insistence. The Joel Reynolds of the NRDC decision. And of course, there were discussions continued between concedes this compromise leaves tax benefits. the ranch and a core group of five the development plans mostly environmental organizations. What unchanged, except for pulling back Everyone in the room knew that this Galvin didn’t expect was the deal a bit from some of the ridges where idea was not going to fly. Merely that the NRDC, the Sierra Club, the condors forage—a change that selling mansions in the ten canyons Audubon, and the others struck federal wildlife biologists would where the condors once nested with the ranch owners in May 2008, have almost certainly required would bring in a profit of at least when they made the extraordinary anyway. The conserved land would $350 million, and that would be just promise not to oppose any of the remain open to current uses: grazing, a tiny piece of a very big product. developments—before detailed hunting, agriculture, mining. The The investors in New York had not plans had been drawn up. In return, agreement would allow about a bought Tejon Ranch in order to play Tejon Ranch agreed to the most quarter of the land proposed for philanthropist. dramatic part of Galvin’s proposal, conservation to be developed, too, if the environmental groups failed to Then came the backup plan developed setting aside up to 90 percent of the land for conservation as he raise millions of dollars to buy the by the group, which Galvin had land at market rate by May 2011. reluctantly embraced: Go ahead, had suggested. The land would be According to Reynolds, most of and board chairman of the new “In other words,” says Galvin, “they those 62,000 acres would have to be Tejon Ranch Conservancy, seems want us to do the dirty work…. This bought with state bond money for perplexed by such criticism. He agreement is going to make it harder conversion to a state park, but at the says the stakes were too high to for us to win. But that doesn’t mean moment such a purchase by the cash- take the purist position and oppose we won’t win.” strapped state is out of the question, all development, fighting it out in given the reality of budget shortfalls court. “Then we risk gambling with Third Avenue Management, a and a moratorium on bond issues. one of the most important biological specialist in distressed properties The land has yet to be appraised. properties in the . Even (it recently acquired a $20 million if you could block their plans, project share of LandSource Communities A media event was held at the by project, there are a thousand Development, the bankrupt owner ranch in May 2008, featuring individual parcels on that ranch. They of 15,000 acres in Newhall and Governor Schwarzenegger and could sell those off one by one, and Valencia), certainly sees the one environmental leader after you would lose the ability to try and conservation agreement as a good another praising the deal. Reynolds manage a big landscape…. This way, investment. Michael Winer, a Third described it as a “once-in-a-lifetime we get 90 percent in the conservation Avenue portfolio manager and Tejon achievement.” Bill Corcoran of the column…. From my perspective, it board member, wrote in a quarterly Sierra Club called it the “ecological was a huge environmental win.” letter to shareholders that the deal equivalent of the Louisiana Purchase.” allows the company to avoid 50 The Los Angeles Times proclaimed Reynolds says he understands why years of litigation and to pack more that it “ends years of debate over the some environmentalists are critical development onto the ranch than it fate of an untrammeled tableau of of the “difficult judgment call” could ever have achieved had the mountains, wildflower fields, twisted behind the agreement with Tejon environmental groups refused to oaks and Joshua trees.” Ranch. He has been involved in bargain. “Such protracted litigation,” court battles over environmental he added, “would obviously have a Missing from the praise of the plan issues for 29 years, he explains, devastating impact on the value of was that 23,000 homes as well as and has no reluctance to fight. But Tejon Ranch common stock.” hotels, condos, golf courses, and the NRDC concluded that Tejon an industrial center were going to demanded a different approach and With the January release of drafts be plopped down in the midst of that the unyielding stance favored by of the Tejon Ranch environmental the preserves. Absent also were the the Center for Biological Diversity impact study and the habitat Sierra Club activists who lived near would do more harm than good. “We conservation plan, the project has the area slated for development and thought long and hard about what entered a new phase. The documents who adamantly opposed it. They we’re getting and what we’re giving make clear that the ranch intends to resigned from leadership in the local up,” he says. “My judgment: What use the conservation agreement as Sierra Club group so they could we achieved here, we couldn’t have mitigation for the development— continue to voice opposition to the gotten with a lawsuit. We couldn’t meaning that the work with development. “We did not support have gotten with ten lawsuits. organizations to conserve parts of the the deal,” says one of the resigning Almost a quarter of a million acres of ranch is being held out as a means of board members, Jan de Leeuw, chair contiguous land at the heart of four making up for any harm to species or of UCLA’s department of statistics important ecosystems in California. the ecosystem. and a resident of Cuddy Valley, near What we had to give up is our ability Tejon Ranch. He was more pointed Environment Now publishes an to challenge whatever development annual tally of top ecological on his Not in My Back Yard blog the ranch ultimately proposes…. But about development in the Grapevine achievements in Southern California our agreement does not restrict the (two of this year’s winning efforts region, writing “first we destroyed rights of anyone else to intervene. the Indians, then we co-opted the were the successful opposition to a That was very important to us.” He toll road through San Onofre State environmentalists, now it’s time to and Chisholm stress that none of get rid of the California condor.” Beach and the passage of Measure R the groups is expressing approval of in Los Angeles to fund transit). The Graham Chisholm, Audubon the development plans. They simply Santa Monica-based organization California’s executive director aren’t commenting on them. placed the Tejon conservation agreement in its “environmental isn’t the same as allowing a wild out of altruism or a desire to keep its setbacks and failures” category, species to recover. “It’s dooming development plans on track doesn’t calling it “the epitome of poor the condors to be a zoo species for matter, Reynolds notes. The effect is planning.” the rest of its existence. That is not the same: Important wilderness will acceptable.” be preserved. “I think those groups [working with Tejon Ranch] vastly underestimated The uncertain economy and housing For the Center for Biological the impact of their participation market woes will likely hold off the Diversity, the stakes are just as high. in that agreement,” says Adam bulldozers for now, but activists If it can alter the course of the Tejon Keats, the Center for Biological fear that government agencies, development, if the construction Diversity’s urban wildlands director. particularly at the county level, can be stopped or molded into “This agreement is being used to may be more inclined than ever to something environmentally sound, justify development, even in the issue permits in hope of providing if consideration of extinction and condor’s critical habitat.” Keats an economic stimulus. The Tejon global warming can be made to has been studying the 18 pounds of Ranch Conservancy, meanwhile, is trump money and sprawl here, documents produced by the ranch moving ahead with pilot programs on California’s last frontier, then and released by the government, for public access and docent tours Galvin sees Tejon Ranch as the but he has been thwarted by the of a property that has always been start of something big, something U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s closed to the public. University of nationwide, a seismic shift. It will refusal to relinquish supporting California scientists are negotiating mean the United States is no longer records. One concern he has raised to set up a nature reserve on the land, stuck on the old questions of how and is failure to provide for the recovery and plans are under way for a state why we should take action against of the condor, as required by the park, even though, as yet, there is global warming and extinction. We Endangered Species Act. The plan no money in sight to buy the land will have moved on to the questions calls instead for a 50-year program from the Tejon Ranch Company. of how much and how fast we should involving a man-made feeding zone Reynolds says the company has act. to draw condors away from the new indicated it will extend the purchase developments. But Keats argues this deadline if necessary. Whether that is