About the Master Plan

The Master Plan for the Redwoods shapes and guides the League's conservation program. By utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) technology and a series of maps, League staff have created detailed regional conservation strategies that support the Master Plan. These show the League where to focus its work. The Master Plan also gives the League a solid context in which it evaluates opportunities for conservation, facilitating a nimble, well-informed response. In addition, the Master Plan identifies conservation partners and opportunities for collaboration.

The Master Plan has created a vision for the Save-the-Redwoods League, in which ancient redwood forests, parks, and connecting landscapes are identified and prioritized for protection. The League's planning work sets the stage for protecting redwood forests in their beauty and diversity, across their natural range. It recommends specific approaches that League staff use to increase the viability of California's redwood parks. For example, it identifies key inholdings within parks and critical connections between parks, and examines the current and future context in which parks and ancient redwoods are located. It recommends tools that could be used to protect the forests, such as conservation easements and land acquisition. It also assesses threats to redwood forests. It recognizes the redwood forests as places of inspiration and recreation for present and future generations, and seeks to build the connection between people and the redwoods.

The information and maps created for the Master Plan are used by the League’s conservation staff on a daily basis. For example, the Master Plan highlighted the central region of the coast redwoods as mostly unprotected. The League's planning work further identified the Big River watershed as important to protect, given its ancient redwoods, high biodiversity, high quality of habitat for rare and imperiled species, and opportunities for collaboration. Based on maps and data developed for the League's coastal Mendocino/Sonoma plan, staff identified lands that are a high priority to protect. This work facilitated the purchase of lands that both protect old-growth forest and secure watershed protection for Montgomery Woods State Reserve. The new additions also doubled the size of the reserve.

View from recent additions to Montgomery Woods State Reserve

The Master Plan for the Redwoods utilizes well-recognized scientific principles and methods to prioritize and inform the League's land acquisition, restoration, and research programs. As part of the Master Plan, the League has completed four detailed regional plans. These include conservation strategies for:

Spring wildflowers in the
recent additions (Nemophila)

• The Santa Cruz Mountains
• Humboldt and Del Norte counties
• Coastal Mendocino and Sonoma
• The Bay Area (including Napa, Marin, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties) and the Big Sur Coast (Monterey County)

The Master Plan for the Redwoods has grown from a long tradition of conservation planning at Save-the-Redwoods League. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, the League and the California State Park Commission worked with Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. to develop a program for California State Parks. The results of this work survive today in the network of state parks. Between 1918 and 2007, the League successfully protected more than 177,000 acres of park land in 57 different parks and reserves. More on the League's history.

Methods

The League's Master Plan utilizes GIS technology to create models that help to focus its conservation efforts. For example, League staff used hexagon-based GIS models to identify areas in the central and southern regions of the coast redwoods that are important to protect. The models incorporated data on locations of ancient redwoods, existing parks, habitat for imperiled and sensitive species, trails, threats to the forest, and many other criteria. These models are neutral with regard to property ownership, reflecting Save-the-Redwoods League's commitment to work with willing sellers only.

A close-up view of the League’s GIS hexagon model:

How the hexagon model works: because the hexagon on the left scores high for many of the things important to the redwoods, the hexagon receives a high cumulative score. In contrast, the hexagon on the right scores high for only two criteria, thus receives a low cumulative score and is lower priority to protect.

Results of the hexagon model for the Bay Area and Big Sur Coast:

Areas that are a high priority to protect are shown in the darkest shades, with parks in the left panel, connecting landscapes in the middle panel, and ancient redwoods in the right panel.

Scientific Principles

The League's conservation strategies incorporate the theory and principles of conservation biology. These are discussed further in The Redwood Forest: History, Ecology, and Conservation of the Coast Redwoods, edited by Reed Noss and published in 2000 by Save-the-Redwoods League and Island Press.

Principles of Conservation Biology:

1. Species well distributed across their native range are less susceptible to extinction than species confined to small portions of their range.
2. Large blocks of habitat, containing large populations, are better than small blocks with small populations.
3. Blocks of habitat close together are better than blocks far apart.
4. Habitat in contiguous blocks is better than fragmented habitat.
5. Interconnected blocks of habitat are better than isolated blocks.
6. Blocks of habitat that are roadless or otherwise inaccessible to humans are better than roaded and accessible blocks.
7. The fewer data or more uncertainty, the more conservative (i.e., causing less reduction or disruption of natural habitats) a conservation or development plan should be.
8. Maintaining viable (i.e., undegraded, fully functioning) ecosystems is usually more efficient, economical, and effective than a species-by-species approach.

Additional Resources

North Coastal California Stewardship Report

The Bureau of Land Management and Save-the-Redwoods League convened a series of workshops in late 2000 and early 2001 for groups working region-wide in the north coast on land management and conservation. The objective was to better understand the landscape and discuss ongoing land conservation efforts across the region.

The report is available as Adobe PDF files below. These files can be read and printed using the freely available Adobe Acrobat .

• Introduction:
  Maps & A Brief Land-Use History (530K)
• The Focus Areas:
  A - Lake Earl & the Crescent City Coastal Plain (149K)
  B - The Smith River (362K)
  C - Coastal Redwood National Park (154K)
  D - Redwood Creek (965K)
  E - Headwaters to Humboldt Bay (243K)
  F - Humboldt Redwoods & the Lower Eel (180K)
  G - Grizzly Creek & the Van Duzen (208K)
  H - Mattole Valley (180K)
  I - South Fork Eel River (175K)
  J - Lost Coast Rivers (177K)
  K - Middle & Main Fork Eel, & Mad River (176K)
  A Conservation Lexicon (33K)
  Full Report (single file) (3,466K)