What We Protect

Update, Dec. 17, 2019: North Coast activists scored a major victory today as the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to deny Terra-Gen’s destructive on-shore wind project. A few things about this important development: The Wiyot Tribe was key. The Tribal Council voted unanimously to oppose the wind project and they sent many representatives Read more

Working alongside our landowner partners, from 2017-19 Siskiyou Land Conservancy will manage a three-year, $207,000 restoration grant from the U.S. Natural Resource Conservation Service to restore forest health, and replace failing culverts with a bridge, on the 148-acre South Fork Smith River Property that SLC protects with a conservation easement. Although SLC does not receive Read more

Since 2001, Siskiyou Land Conservancy and our predecessor, the Smith River Project, have led efforts to reduce and eliminate the annual application of 300,000 pounds of highly toxic fumigants, herbicides and fungicides on 1,000 acres of bottom land that surrounds the Smith River estuary, in Del Norte County. These pesticides are used to grow 100 percent of North America’s production of Easter lily bulbs. Two of these pesticides — the carcinogenic and fish-killing fumigants metam sodium and 1,3-Dichlropropene — are used on lily fields in pounds-per-acre amounts that are higher than anywhere else in California, which is really saying something.

Siskiyou Land Conservancy has completed one of our most exciting projects yet. In October 2016 we recorded a conservation easement to protect the natural values of a 183-acre parcel on the Mad River, above Maple Creek in Humboldt County.

In 2005 Siskiyou Land Conservancy recorded a conservation easement to protect a unique 148-acre privately held wild land along the Wild and Scenic South Fork Smith River. The property is home to the easternmost redwoods on the Smith River, as well as the largest privately held flat on the South Fork Smith River.

In 2005 Siskiyou Land Conservancy acquired 160 acres of critical Coho spawning habitat on McCoy Creek, in northern Mendocino County. Our two parcels contain one mile of the McCoy Creek drainage, and spawning occurs on the property.

In 2004 Siskiyou Land Conservancy purchased a pristine 80-acre parcel of rare plant habitat at the confluence of Stony Creek and the Wild and Scenic North Fork Smith River, in Del Norte County.

Protecting Salmon, Redwoods and Meadows In late 2009 Siskiyou Land Conservancy recorded a conservation easement that permanently protected 163 acres of privately owned second-growth redwood forestland, meadows and streams in western Mendocino County. The two parcels, near Elk, stretch from rolling ridgetop meadows to the mature redwood forests along Greenwood Creek, which is an important salmonid Read more

Protecting Water Quality and Old-Growth Connectivity In December 2011 Siskiyou Land Conservancy protected 73 acres along a year-round creek that feeds the important spawning habitat of the Wild and Scenic South Fork Eel River. The easement is also important because the land is adjacent to two ancient redwood “islands” and thus provides important habitat connectivity Read more