The Heart of Watsonville Slough- Saved Forever

This article originally appeared in our newsletter, Landmarks, Fall 2009

This fall our members finally got a look at the Watsonville Slough property the Land Trust has been working to protect for more than two years. They got that look just weeks after we completed the transaction, after ten months of scrambling not to lose it. Just being there was a celebration.

Our members crossed the farm fields that lie between Struve and Hansen sloughs and got a good look at the crops, the wildlife, and the intersection of sloughs that make this such a spectacular property. White pelicans circled overhead, red-tail hawks and merlins swooped across the fields, ducks and geese splashed in the rain-filled slough. Some keen birders spotted a well camouflaged juvenile night hawk in Hansen Slough.

The Land Trust almost lost this property several times this year. From the time state funding was frozen at the end of 2008 until this October, we spent over $90,000 to save land we thought we had already saved. We spent another $110,000 before then. Most of this money came from our members. Without the steady flow of member donations this year, we wouldn't have had the resources to outlast the budget freeze.

Thanks to our members' support the Land Trust was able to secure $13 million dollars in state and partner funds to protect 58 acres of wetlands and 383 acres of organic farmland. This land lies between 350 acres of already protected wetlands and upland habitat, creating an 800 acre block of protected land at the heart of the county's largest freshwater wetland. 90% of California's wetlands have been lost since intensive human settlement began. The few wetlands that remain play an outsized role in the natural order.

The member tours this fall were the first of many. In the coming years our members will get to see the stewardship and restoration work we will undertake on the property – work funded by the farmland we lease. Some of that work has already begun; other projects will wait until we have completed a management plan for the property. You can read about it in future issues of this newsletter or, better still, take one of our walks in the coming year and rejoice in what you have helped save.

 

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