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Press Release February 1 , 2008
In December of 2007, Land Trust Alliance board member David Anderson and his family took their commitment to protecting open land to another level, by donating a conservation easement on their 23-acre Rancho Aldea Antigua. David Anderson has been a leader in voluntary land conservation locally and nationally for over two decades and he is a founder, long-time board member and current general counsel of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County. Rancho Aldea Antigua (Spanish for “ancient village”) runs along the western ridge of the Franklin Creek watershed, just outside the Los Padres National Forest. It is one of several dozen small ranches and farms that create the beautiful, open landscape in the foothills of Carpinteria, along the Central California coast.
"Our family is very pleased to donate a conservation easement on our organically certified avocado ranch to protect it from subdivision and other incompatible uses. We hope this will encourage our neighbors to also donate conservation easements to help protect sustainable community agriculture in the Carpinteria Valley." In addition to supporting a successful avocado operation, the ranch has four acres of oak woodland and coastal scrub that helps sustain local wildlife common to the Carpinteria foothills, including deer, coyote, black bear and bobcat. It also holds significant archaeological remnants of a pre-Chumash native village. The Rancho Aldea Antigua conservation easement ensures that this ranch will never be subdivided. It protects wildlife habitat from disturbance, and requires that the one home allowed on the property be built so that it does not infringe on the open space view of the ranch from a nearby public hiking trail. As general counsel to the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, David Anderson’s application to donate a conservation easement was handled carefully by the Land Trust board of trustees. They used outside legal counsel, adhered to the organization’s policy on conflict of interest and implemented their project selection criteria for the LTSBC strategic conservation plan. The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County has a long-standing interest in conserving agricultural and natural resource land in the Carpinteria Valley and in recent years has negotiated the donation of conservation easements on two nearby ranches. Rancho Monte Alegre adds to a total of more than 3,200 protected acres of this scenic and historic California landscape.
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