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The audience participated in focus groups to come up with ideas for using the property and protecting its resources. Aimee Rutledge, executive director of the Sacramento Valley Conservancy, acted as one of the facilitators.

Area residents discuss plans to preserve Deer Creek Hills property

Published Wednesday, February 9, 2005

The opportunity to contribute ideas about managing the future of more than 4,000 acres of open space drew about three dozen people to the Rancho Murieta Association Building last week.

The Deer Creek Hills master plan workshop was the first of four workshops the Sacramento Valley Conservancy will offer. The goal is to gather public input for a plan that will accommodate oak woodland preservation as well as public access.

All ages gathered at the workshop, including a father and daughter from Sloughhouse, neighboring ranchers, a couple from Murieta Village and Rancho Murieta residents from the North and South.

Deer Creek Hill’s 4,060 acres of rolling grasslands and oak woodlands adjoin Rancho Murieta on the north. The conservancy completed the purchase of the property in 2003 at a cost of $11.4 million, most of it public funding. The property is jointly owned by the conservancy, the County of Sacramento and the state Department of Parks and Recreation. It is managed by the conservancy in cooperation with a local rancher. The conservancy is a private, non-profit land trust.

Aimee Rutledge, executive director of the conservancy, explained that “without a master plan, the conservancy cannot move forward on habitat projects to care for the creeks, oaks, and wildlife on the site, and public access would remain limited to our docent-led tours.” The hikes are a monthly event beginning in the late winter and continuing through spring.

In addition, the property provides winter grazing for cattle. The grazing lease is the only income generated by the land at this time. With proper management, “grazing is the type of use that works,” said Brian Collett, senior associate of the Dangermond Group, a planning and design firm with an emphasis on parks, recreation, and resource conservation. Besides being “an economically productive use of the land,” grazing is a “tool for fire management” and aids in the control of invasive species, he told the group.

Collett, Rutledge and facilitator Dale Flowers lead the workshop, and county parks Deputy Director Jill Ritzman assisted.

According to information available at the meeting, oak woodlands provide habitat for 170 species of birds, 105 mammal species, 58 amphibians and reptiles, and an estimated 5,000 kinds of insects. The oaks and grasslands provide other benefits by filtering water run-off to improve water quality, by protecting the land from erosion, and by having lower fire fuel load potential.

The preservation of the oak woodlands and traditional ranching at Deer Creek Hills are part of a “global” effort to conserve woodlands and working ranches, said Collett.

The land became available after efforts to develop it failed. Unlike Rancho Murieta, Deer Creek Hills lies outside the urban services boundary established by Sacramento County.

The conservancy needs to raise $350,000 to complete the master plan and additional funds to carry out the plan. The plan to preserve the land must go through the same process that a plan to develop it would. Rutledge said the master plan will undergo an environmental review process “just like a development.” The county will perform the EIR and serve as lead agency for the project.

The master plan is expected to be completed by the end of 2006. Comments from the workshops and the draft of the plan will be available online at a web site to be announced later, Rutledge said.

The workshops are sponsored by government agencies, environmental groups and developers. The owners of property in Murieta North that is currently in the county approval process for development are among the developer sponsors.

The audience was divided into four focus groups to weigh in on issues related to the three objectives for managing Deer Creek Hills -- habitat restoration, working ranch, and public access.

The groups agreed the master plan should be based on what has worked in similar projects and should proceed slowly and with caution.

“Don’t start from ground zero -- that’s the big message coming out of this,” Flowers said at the conclusion of the two-and-a-half-hour session.

A thoughtful silence followed the question one woman asked: How do you keep the land as pristine as it is now?

Workshop organizers invited the group to attend the next Deer Creek Hills docent-led tour, which takes place Feb. 26 and runs from 9 a.m. to noon. It’s expected to be the start of a spectacular wildflower season. More information is available here.