Sky Oaks
The Sky Oaks property conservation purchase will forever protect 638 acres of extraordinary natural land bordering expansive other conserved lands in the rural northern San Diego County headwaters of the Santa Margarita and San Luis Rey rivers. The purchase will help ensure permanent protection of a regionally significant wildlife movement corridor, special ecosystems, and abundant biological diversity in a transition zone between semi-arid chaparral lands and arid desert lands.
About This Project
Who is proposing this project?
Lead Organization: The Chaparral Lands Conservancy
Contact Information:
What is proposed?
The Sky Oaks property conservation purchase would complete an important legacy of conservation and scientific research on a special natural landscape and resources in northern San Diego County. The singular and overarching goal of the Sky Oaks property conservation purchase is to permanently protect the property from development and add protected land to an existing larger area of conserved lands supporting regionally significant natural resources.
The Adams family of San Diego is an enthusiastic willing seller of the Sky Oaks property. From 1998 to 2010, the family donated or sold approximately 2,500 acres of their original larger property in Chihuahua Valley for conservation and scientific research including the area that is now a part of the BLM’s Johnson Canyon Area of Critical Environmental Concern that borders the Sky Oaks property for sale and San Diego State University’s nearby Sky Oaks Field Station.
The Sky Oaks property is located at the very edge of California’s mediterranean climate in the headwaters of two major southern California watersheds, the San Luis Rey and Santa Margarita rivers and supports many sensitive ecosystems including oak woodlands, open grasslands, great basin sagebrush meadows (unusual in San Diego County), springs, riparian scrub, and undisturbed ribbonwood and chamise chaparral shrublands. The property is part of a critical regional wildlife movement corridor for mountain lions, deer, and other larger mammals that connects the otherwise isolated Palomar Mountain and Santa Ana mountains with a larger area of conserved lands in northeastern San Diego County and southwestern Riverside County including Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, BLM lands, the Cleveland National Forest, and the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument and San Bernardino National Forest. Several special species have been documented on nearby conserved lands and are very likely to occupy similar habitat on the Sky Oaks property including arroyo toad, badger, Bell’s sparrow, burrowing owl, mountain lion, Quino checkerspot butterfly, southern mule deer, Stephen’s kangaroo rat, western spadefoot toad, and Orcutt’s brodiaea among others.
Development is a real threat to the Sky Oaks property if it is not purchased for permanent preservation. The Sky Oaks property is for sale and could easily be developed with hundreds of new homes under existing zoning and new state laws favoring subdivision and denser development. Energy developers are interested in the area for industrial solar energy facilities and abundant groundwater could be mined from several wells on the property. Development for residences, energy, or water would result in the direct loss of habitat and sensitive species as well as harmful edge effects like noise and lighting in the heart of a relatively intact natural landscape. Development would also likely impact scientific research at the nearby Sky Oaks Field Station. And any development would be dependent on wells and groundwater pumping for water supplies that would deplete the important aquafer supporting perennial water and riparian habitat and species in the headwaters of the San Luis Rey and Santa Margarita rivers.
Project Location
Nearest City and Distance To: Temecula, 35 miles west/northwest via Highway 79
Specific Location (Address): (Multiple addresses) 31225 Chihuahua Valley Rd; 31475 Chihuahua Valley Road; 31750 Chihuahua Valley Rd, Warner Springs, CA 92086
The Sky Oaks property is located in Chihuahua Valley, a rural residential community in the unincorporated County of San Diego near the border with Riverside County. The property borders thousands of acres of federal public land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and is a part of a contiguous natural landscape across hundreds of square miles of other state and federal conserved lands. The property is located at approximately 4,500ft elevation so is subject to all four seasons including cold winters with snow fall and hot summers with thunderstorms. Most of the property is valley terrain and vegetation typical for the mountainous region of eastern San Diego County with large relatively flat meadows covered with oak groves, Great Basin sagebrush, and grasslands or in rolling hills and ravines with various chaparral vegetation communities. Nearby terrain steepens into 6,000ft mountains with more chaparral and some pine trees or drops into canyons with the headwaters of the San Luis Rey and Santa Margarita rivers.
Why is this project on the 30×30 list?
This project promotes the 30×30’s goals of increasing climate resilience, protecting biodiversity, and benefiting the (human) community. The project increases climate resiliency because it will protect large, native, old-growth oak trees and chaparral vegetation that serve as effective carbon sinks, because it will protect a large, contiguous landscape of native ecosystems that are more resilient to climate perturbations, and because it will prevent development that would produce significant vehicle miles traveled and other climate impacts. The project will protect significant biodiversity values because it’s part of a large, contiguous landscape of native ecosystems, because it’s located in an important regional wildlife movement area, and because it provides habitat for several sensitive and listed species. And the project will benefit the human community by improving access to two popular state recreation trails, the California Riding and Hiking Trail that crosses the property and the nearby Pacific Crest Trail as well as by increasing climate resiliency and protecting biodiversity.
How will this project be completed?
This project will be completed with the purchase and transfer of title for the Sky Oaks property by and to one or a combination of agencies and non-profit organizations, the County of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department, United States Bureau of Land Management, Wildlife Conservation Board, and The Chaparral Lands Conservancy.