Irvine Company's Superb Gift Protects 11,500 More Acres of Orange County Habitat

Irvine Ranch Land Reserve
© Stephen Francis

In November 2001 Donald Bren, chairman of The Irvine Company, announced that his company would donate to The Nature Conservancy permanent conservation easements on 11,500 acres of prime natural habitat.

The Conservancy has collaborated with The Irvine Company since 1992, when the company set aside 22,000 acres and asked the Conservancy to take over their long-term management and restoration.

The company was founded in the nineteenth century by pioneer James Irvine to manage his 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch and is now a real estate investment firm.
The Irvine Company's most recent gift includes a swath of the rugged Santa Ana Mountains east of the city of Orange and a parcel in Laguna Canyon, one of the last undeveloped coastal canyons in southern California. The generous donation includes $20 million for managing the reserve and protecting and restoring wildlife habitat. In addition, Bren has set aside $10 million for improving public access to appropriate portions of these lands.

Conservancy ecologist Trish Smith said, "Within these 11,500 acres are large, relatively pristine tracts of land that support a diverse array of native wildlife and plants, including rare species such as the American badger, speckled rattlesnake, chaparral beargrass, and Tecate cypress."

The newly protected areas also link up wild lands adjacent to the Cleveland National Forest. Preserving such ecological linkages is a major concern of The Nature Conservancy. One of the greatest dangers to biodiversity is the fragmentation of natural landscapes, which results in insufficient contiguous habitat to support genetically healthy populations of native species.

The 11,500-acre gift brings the Irvine Ranch Land Reserve to more than 50,000 acres — an expanse larger than the island of Manhattan. The Conservancy now manages or co-manages 33,500 of those acres. The other portions are handled by public agencies.

Formerly known as the Irvine Company Open Space Reserve, the Irvine Ranch Land Reserve is a network of nature preserves and open space created from the company's former ranch lands in and around the cities of Irvine, Laguna Beach, and Orange.

The reserve features superb examples of southern California natural communities such as coast live oak woodlands, chaparral, and coastal sage scrub. It is home to a wide variety of native animals and plants, including the threatened California gnatcatcher and the coastal cactus wren. For a decade the Conservancy has managed the reserve and carried out habitat restoration projects, and southern Californians have enjoyed hiking, mountain cycling, horseback riding, and birdwatching there.

Working with The Irvine Company and local government agencies, Conservancy scientists are developing plans for public access and long-term habitat management.