Point Reyes Light - October 7, 2004
A Valley mans struggle to donate easement
This first article in a two-part series will focus on a San Geronimo landowner’s attempt to dedicate a public-access easement. Next week’s article will tell why some members of the public are opposing the idea.
By Jim Kravets
First of two reports
Wiccans, pot growers, native species, Open Space rangers, illicit campers, and incomplete deed restrictions, this unlikely mix has come together to create what a San Geronimo landowner acknowledges is a very complicated problem.
Uli Zangpo and his wife Jennifer Baker in December 2003 bought a 23-acre vacant lot in San Geronimo adjacent to Marin County Open Space District’s Gary Giacomini Open Space Preserve. It also borders on Marin Municipal Water District property above Kent Lake reservoir.
For decades, hikers, bikers and equestrians had been using the unpaved Manzanita Fire Road, which bisects Zangpo’s property, to reach the open land above his property.
Zangpo, the new landowner, wants to ultimately relocate part of the fire road that’s on his property. The road would not be for public access but only for emergency vehicles; it would have a hard, but unpaved surface.
Zangpo also wants to build a separate trail for hikers, mountain bicyclists, and equestrians which would provide access to the open space lands.
Cluster of rare plants
The problem with the present alignment, Zangpo told The Light, is that it runs through a very large cluster of rare plants. The new routes (both on his property) would skirt the plants on both sides, at one point by 400 feet. The paths would have the added benefit, he said, of creating a buffer against invasions by non-native species.
The immediate problem, however, are the Wiccans, pot growers, and illicit campers. Zangpo said, "My immediate desire is to get a [Marin Open Space] ranger to patrol the area. Because this is private property, the rangers can’t patrol it. They can drive through, but they can’t legally do anything about violations committed on my property."
Good witches & pot growers
When Zangpo and Open Space officials were inspecting his property last spring, he said, they found 750 marijuana plants growing on 11 terraces cut into the hillside.
"It was tucked between chaparral and poison oak," Zangpo said. "Someone had obviously been doing this for some time. They had a drip irrigation system."
Besides the pot patch, Zangpo has found spots on his property where Wiccans have held ceremonies and left candles burning, he said. The property owner added he has also found campsites with trash around them.
Zangpo wants the county to accept an 18-month access easement on the existing Manzanita fire road, with an option to keep renewing it by mutual consent, until the new routes are built, he said.
Landowner says he has no desire to restrict access
The landowner insisted he has no desire to restrict public access – and, in fact, would like to make his property a "gateway to the Gary Giacomini Open Space Preserve. For this to be possible, he said, the county government needs to accept ownership of a public easement that can be realigned sometime in the future.
Merely doing the necessary environmental reports preclude beginning work immediately, he said.
Over a series of four visits beginning in the fall of 2003, Zangpo and Gray Hayes, a biologist from the Nature Conservancy, a state-funded conservation organization, found on Zangpo’s property a collection of rare plant species. Hayes’ term for them is "serpentine-based maritime chaparral."
Zangpo told The Light that Hayes specializes in coastal chaparrals, and he calculated that the particular cluster of plants on Zangpo’s property has been at that location for 900,000 years.
Chaparral from Southwest
"They migrated from Arizona and New Mexico before the Sierra Nevada rose and are no longer present anywhere else," Zangpo quoted the biologist as saying. This relatively small cluster has survived, the biologist is reported to have said, because the persistent fog and the proximity of the ocean moderated their micro-climate.
Among the plants found are three unique species of oak, four varieties of orchid, and 45 additional rare specimens, Zangpo reported, adding that the biologist said at least a dozen species of insects depend on each of these plants and likewise are found nowhere else in this area.
While official endangered status for the plants has not been legally designated, Zangpo is convinced they are unique. "Gray said there are specimens here that, standing on the ridgetop [at the upper edge of Zangpo’s property], you can see their entire global range of the species."
Path’s gradual slope
Zangpo said the new path and fire road that would go on either side of the rare plants would – unlike the current fire road – be a six-foot-wide, multi-use trail with a grade of less than seven percent. The Open Space District, he said, opposes grades greater than seven percent because they are more likely to erode.
If building a new trail seems suspiciously philanthropic, there are other reasons for the benevolence, said Zangpo. "[The current fire road] was built by yahoos with bulldozers. It’s a hazard for users. I used to be a paramedic, and I’m tired of scraping people up."
Zangpo said that trail and road alignments suggested by the biologist would follow the existing "soil variation" on the perimeter of the rare plants’ habitat. The outer limit of the serpentine-rich soil forms the outer limit of the "serpentine-based maritime chaparral," he explained.
In spite of what seems like a win-win-win situation for plants, public, and Zangpo, some members of the community (particularly Marin Horse Council and the San Geronimo Valley Planning Group) have taken considerable issue with Zangpo’s plans.
In fact, the issue has proven so controversial that the Board of Supervisors, who last week were expected to accept the temporary easement, removed the item from their agenda at the last minute to allow time for further review.
"[County officials] said they didn’t want a knock-down brawl at the Supervisors’ meeting," Zangpo told The Light. "They wanted to clarify the issues further." Details of the controversy will be published in next week’s issue.
In 1983, the county approved development of a 117-lot subdivision called Skye Ranch in the southern hills of the San Geronimo Valley. The subdivision was never developed, and in December 1995, the Marin Open Space District bought the land (except for 16 lots) for $2.1 million of which the Buck Trust contributed $1.05 million.
Once a preserve of the Open Space District, it was named in honor of former-supervisor Gary Giacomini, who represented West Marin for 24 years. He had been a pro-environmental supervisor and had been instrumental in orchestrating the deal that saved the open land from development.
Now he is sparring with some Valley residents as he tries to get the Board of Supervisors to accept an 18-month, renewable easement for public-access to the preserve.