This is news from way down in the foothills, but awesome news nonetheless. Called "one of the great conservation achievements in California history," several environmental groups worked with the Tejon Ranch Co. to protect 240,000 acres of the largest contiguous private landholding in the state.

Of all the environmental issues out there that need to be dealt with, open space and wilderness preservation seem to me to be the most tangible. Love to see this kind of work being done. That 240,000 acres could just as easily have become golf courses, subdivisions and strip malls.

From AP:

At 375 square miles, the preserve of desert, woodlands and
grasslands would be eight times the size of San Francisco and nearly
the size of Los Angeles, said Bill Corcoran, the Sierra Club’s senior
regional representative.

"There is, in my opinion, no other place
like it in California — it’s unrivaled in the diversity of native
wildlife and plants," said Corcoran, who helped negotiate the deal.
"Tejon is key to us because it’s the only place where the Sierra
Nevadas, the coastal range and Mojave Desert and Central Valley all
meet."

Tejon Ranch sits atop the Tehachapi Mountains 60 miles
north of Los Angeles and is home to elk, wild turkeys, coyotes, bears
and eagles, as well as a critical habitat for condors.

The Tejon
Ranch Co. has been trying for years to develop three projects, or 10
percent of the 270,000 acre ranch, while appeasing environmentalists.

The
other groups that have signed on are the Natural Resources Defense
Council, Audubon California, Planning and Conservation League and
Endangered Habitats League.

The NY Times published an expansive piece on potential sprawl and development in the Tejon Ranch, describing it thusly:

The 11,700 acres allocated for Centennial are part of Tejon Ranch, one
of the last great California ranches. Comprising more than 270,000
acres, or 426 square miles, the ranch is roughly one-third the size of
Rhode Island. It is so large that many things that need to get from
Northern California to Southern California — natural gas, drinking
water, electricity, fiber-optic cables, the cars on I-5 — pass through
it. The ranch is home to about 14,000 head of cattle, and its
agricultural fields yield almonds, pistachios and wine grapes. “All
these other huge properties from the 19th century have been broken up
long ago,” says Jan de Leeuw, the chairman of the statistics department
at U.C.L.A., who lives near the ranch and opposes the plans to develop
Centennial. “But Tejon has never been broken up. It exists as a
dinosaur.”

*Photo courtesy of Vincent Laforet for the New York Times