"Preservation" Ranch?

The so-called "Preservation" Ranch is a 19,300 acre development in the heart of the Gualala River watershed owned by Premier Pacific Vineyards (PPV).

PPV plans to "preserve" their land by destroying 1,600+ acres of coastal redwood forest and converting it into vineyards. Those vineyards - and the road infrastructure needed to service them - will fragment the remaining forest land, reducing its value as habitat for the creatures that depend on the forest for survival.

Water usage for irrigation, frost protection and supplying resident and migrant workers, filling of seasonal creeks and building of dozens of reservoirs will have significant adverse impacts on down-stream water users - including fish.

Sonoma County will prepare an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to assess the project's potential to result in adverse impacts and to consider feasible mitigations and alternatives.

Comment letters on EIR scope, from:

National Marine Fisheries Service
Friends of the Gualala River
Sebastopol Water Information Group
Community Clean Water Institute
PERSWatch
Peter Baye
John Shordike

To aid public review, Friends of the Gualala River (FoGR) is providing excerpted highlights, or "tabs," of important items in the Initial Study that could otherwise be buried and obscured. These tabs are taken straight from the Initial Study with page references or verbatim quotations -- not our interpretations.

FoGR's own independent critical questions about the project - an important foundation for scoping - are an open and growing list, expanding as we consult with experts and non-technical residents alike. Our updated question and concern list is presented separate from the Initial Study tabs.

The Sonoma County Permit and Resource Management Department (PRMD) has prepared an Initial Study of the Preservation Ranch Project to identify potential impacts and issues that should be assessed more thoroughly in the EIR.

Sonoma County's Permit and Resource Management Department (PRMD) has received an enormous stack of paperwork from PPV. The documents are available at the PRMD office, Santa Rosa Public Library, Horicon Elementary School in Annapolis, CalFire office at The Sea Ranch and on the PRMD website; see: PRMD: Preservation Ranch Project Proposal.

Preservation Ranch,
in the heart of the Gualala River watershed

"The heart of the proposed mitigation concept for Preservation Ranch is forest restoration as a means of compensating for the loss of forest to vineyards. . . The nature of mitigation and restoration, particularly of coastal forests in this region, should be given a hard look before they are accepted as a routine permit process."

- Retail restoration and forest mitigation:
Conservation during the new "Grape Rush"
by Peter R. Baye, Ph.D.

Evans Ridge vineyard development on 'Preservation' Ranch
from a series of aerial photographs by Jamie Hall, October 2007

"Preservation Ranch is the latest in a long series of environmental assaults on western Sonoma County forests. After years of environmentally destructive logging, Sonoma County forests now face the additional threat of permanent development and conversion to vineyards. Numerous western Sonoma County forest conversions have been approved in the past, but the Preservation Ranch proposal is more than twice as large as all previous proposed and approved conversions combined since 1989."

Worse than a Clearcut
Video produced by the Sierra Club Redwood Chapter.

More information

CEQA process chart