Benefactors Create and Maintain a Private Park in California

THE waterfall that is the best-known feature of the Bohemia Ecological Preserve is currently nothing more than a picturesque spill of bone-dry rocks. The shaggy grasslands that carpet the preserve?s rolling terrain are a parched golden brown.

But as Craig Anderson, 51, leads a group of hikers up gravel roads toward a hilltop campground, the fact that the landscape is at something less than peak splendor after several rain-free months does little to diminish his enthusiasm. And why should it? In California?s economic climate ? also fairly parched ? Bohemia Ecological Preserve is that rarest of specimens: a recently opened park. In May, it celebrated its official grand opening.

Granted, caveats are in order. Bohemia, about 15 miles west of Santa Rosa, is not owned or operated by the California Department of Parks and Recreation or any other government agency. It is the property of LandPaths, a nonprofit that encourages people to experience the land of Sonoma County, and where Mr. Anderson serves as executive director. Also, while Bohemia is open to the public, access is provided only through guided hikes, volunteer stewardship opportunities and other scheduled events.

And yet, at a time when public parks have been undergoing budget cuts and service reductions, Bohemia and the other properties LandPaths manages ? including Grove of the Old Trees, a 28-acre stand of old-growth redwood trees in Occidental, and Willow Creek State Park, a 3,300-acre preserve near the town of Duncan Mills that LandPaths operates for the state ? have been engineered from the ground up to survive in less forgiving economic environments.

?We call what we do ?people-powered parks,??? Mr. Anderson tells the hikers at one point. ?As the government?s been less able, the people are stepping up.?

Essentially, people-powered parks expand on the volunteerism that has always been a facet of public parks ? so much so that LandPaths can operate its holdings at a fraction of what it would cost the state.

Paradoxically, the LandPaths vision arose in part as a response to relatively well-financed parks and the way they can turn the outdoors into little more than a consumerized, turnkey experience for users. Instead of offering visitors a scenic parking lot to hook up their R.V.?s, Mr. Anderson wanted to create places that encouraged visitors to establish deeper connections with the land through active stewardship.

But persuading visitors to build trails and uproot invasive plant species on a regular basis is not just a good way to foster a love of the land ? the hands-on approach that LandPaths adopted in the late 1990s is also a way to keep open space accessible at a time when California voters have rejected even modest tax increases to provide the money that public parks need to maintain current services.

?I?m always looking for new models, new changes in the way people do business,? says Ted Swindells, a venture investor based in San Francisco. ?And that?s what I saw in LandPaths.?

Mr. Swindells learned about the nonprofit two years ago, when he was looking for something to do with a large piece of property he had bought a decade earlier, a parcel known as Bohemia Ranch. The land had been used for a cattle ranch, for logging and for mining, but for years before Mr. Swindells?s purchase it had been held by real estate developers who had done little to maintain it. As a result, it was a popular party spot. On summer days, it rang with the whine of motorcycles and the crack of gunfire. A meadow known as the ?shooting gallery? offered a scenic setting for target practice.

?There was garbage everywhere, especially old cars and shotgun shells, so I was advised to get an environmental impact report when I bought it,? Mr. Swindells remembers. ?They basically said there was nothing to worry about, but they also didn?t see one living thing ? no animals, no birds, not even any lizards. I think the people who?d been hanging out up there had been getting drunk and shooting anything that moved.?

Mr. Swindells, who hails from an Oregon logging family, bought the property in part to create a weekend retreat and in part to get some hands-on experience in conservation practices. But despite considerable investment, he and his family never ended up spending much time there. In 2009, he decided he wanted to sell, preferably to keep the property available for public use.

Years earlier, he had established a conservation easement that restricted the ways he or any future owners could develop the land. The nonprofit to which he had donated the easement, Sonoma Land Trust, tried to structure a deal with state and local agencies. But Mr. Swindells began to doubt that the state could effectively manage the property; it had its hands full trying to stave off closings and cutbacks in the hundreds of parks it was already operating.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/giving/benefactors-create-and-maintain-a-private-park-in-california.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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