I just read an article yesterday in The Atlantic Magazine online, whereby a wealthy couple of Californians donated $165 million to The Nature Conservancy to buy 24,000 acres of prime wild habitat on Point Conception, about an hour west of Santa Barbara. Point Conception is a geologically prominent part of California’s silhouette as seen on a map. It’s the squared-off semi-peninsula where the Santa Ynez Mountains plunge into the Pacific, and the coastline turns from a generally east-west orientation to a more-or-less north-south one, separating the northern parts of the state from the southern ones in a general geographical and cultural sense. It is here that a diverse confluence of both terrestrial and marine wildlife and plant communities meet, in a state already known for being the biologically richest in the United States of America.
I’ll link to the Atlantic article and let that speak to the importance of the conservation event that has just happened here. Some points of note are that when some wealthy people who by whatever combination of good fortune and hard work and creativity have been blessed with hundreds of millions of dollars or more, if they see fit to put that money to good use via philanthropic efforts then they can have a lasting positive impact upon society and the environment that sustains us all. For Jack and Laura Dangermond to have taken some of their wealth and put it forth into protecting a wild and relatively intact part of Southern California’s coastline, so heavily developed almost everywhere else between Point Conception and the Mexican border, is a tremendous gift to all, especially the plants and animals that can now continue to live undisturbed. I hope it sets an example for other people with vast economic resources to emulate, a point more fully discussed in the article below.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/bixby-ranch-dangermond-land-donation-in-california/548849/
I took a road trip to Santa Barbara back in April 2010 to deliver some plants from my Arizona nursery to a client there. While in the area I decided to head out to Point Conception and visit Jalama Beach County Park, situated in between Vandenberg Air Force Base to the northwest and what was then called the Bixby Ranch. Road access to the region is very limited, which lends a bit of an edge-of-the-earth feeling to the place and is responsible for much of the biological integrity that remains here. At the time I had no idea that the Dangermond family might already be working with The Nature Conservancy to protect the Bixby Ranch holdings to the east. I did however note the beauty of the forested valleys and chaparral covered hills and the raw windy beaches that were for once not crowded with multi-million dollar homes. What follows now is a series of images I took from that trip almost 8 years ago. It’s of great inspiration to me today to hear that these vistas have been protected in perpetuity and are no longer at risk of development.
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A view northwards along the sweeping Pacific coast towards Vandenberg AFB from Jalama Beach County Park, just north of Point Conception.
Wild sages so characteristic of California crowd the roadside above a meadow in what is now the newly-created Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve. I believe that are probably Salvia clevelandii, although there are numerous others and I don’t necessarily know them well enough to be certain at this point.
The narrow, twisting, two-lane Jalama Road provides access to the coast from Pacific Coast Highway 1, one of California’s most famous and scenic roads. On its way to the water, you pass scrub-covered hillsides, flat meadows, and dense groves of coastal live oaks, which have become increasingly rare in the state. The preserve protects over 5000 acres (8 square miles) of these woodlands and almost 20,000 more acres of grassland and chaparral.
The facilities at Jalama Beach County Park enable visitors camping, surfing, hiking, and natural history pursuits. Here the late April hills are clad in colorful spring wildflowers after a winter rainy season.
The coastal dunes at Jalama Beach and the nearby Dangermond Preserve are home to red sand verbena (Abronia maritima) and sea rocket (Cakile maritima), both of which are semi-succulents that sprawl across the sands, helping to stabilize them and eventually create habitat for other species.
The red sand verbena has hot pink flowers and simple roundish leaves, while the sea rocket has pale lavender flowers and deeply divided pinnate leaves. They frequently grow intertwined together along the beaches near Point Conception.
The gorgeous plant community atop the coastal bluffs at the new Dangermond Preserve includes giant coreopsis (Leptosyne gigantea, formerly Coreopsis gigantea). Growing mainly along the coast between Point Conception to the Mexican border, and on the Channel Islands, this is a strikingly attractive succulent plant in the Asteraceae. The daisy/aster/sunflower family is utterly gigantic, with nearly 33,000 species in 1911 genera, making it one of the two largest plant families on earth. (The Orchidaceae is the other.) Despite this enormity and their worldwide distribution including thousands of dryland species, there are relatively few succulents in the daisy family. One of the best is L. gigantea and it is found here!
The two dominant plants across the elevated bluffs here are the giant coreopsis and some sort of sage with fine, silvery foliage, probably an Artemisia of some sort. Both plants are members of the Asteraceae as discussed above.
I found the gently interwoven textures and complementary colors of the two plants very eye-pleasing. Although it was admittedly sometimes a bit difficult to walk among these thigh-high thickets, which left little room for a foothold. That’s okay however – humans do not need instant and immediate access to every single place. It’s worth working for some rewards. 🙂 
The ferny foliage and bright yellow flowers of Leptosyne gigantea make it a desirable garden subject in suitable climates, mostly mild ones. The plants don’t tolerate very much cold and resent summer heat and humidity in wetter subtropical and tropical places, so they tend to not be grown widely outside of certain types of Mediterranean climates. I was past the season of bloom, but these scenes would have been even nicer had the flowers been at their lucid golden peak a few weeks prior.
Other plants widely dominant here are the white to pale pink-flowered island morning glory (Calystegia macrostegia) and one of those 33,000 or so yellow composites I’ve been talking about lately. I am not sure of this, but it might be California brittlebush (Encelia californica)? 
Whatever the yellow shrub is, it goes well with the island morning glories.
Wild turkeys are found in this region as well, along with a host of other animals such as deer, coyotes, foxes, badgers, raptors, and mountain lions, all able to live relatively undisturbed by the pressures of humanity crushing in on them.
And lastly, I will post two images of unexpected animals being kept at a private ranch just east of the Dangermond Preserve, the ranch to which I brought the unusual agave species that were the impetus of me making this trip. In 2010 the owner had a small herd of about 7 or 8 zebras, and also about a dozen Ankole-Watusi cattle. Ankole-Watusi cattle are a striking looking breed that were only recently developed in the 1980s, mostly in the United States, bred by crossing several African Ankole longhorn types with the humped Zebu types of India and Madagascar. The resulting animals are known for their strong reddish coloration and especially their enormous thick horns, which are the largest in the animal kingdom, both wild and domesticated. Still a very uncommon breed, Ankole-Watusi are perhaps fittingly being raised nearby the new preserve which highlights the agricultural diversity of California, as much as the preserve itself conveys the natural biodiversity of the state.
