My comment though has to do with the word "wilderness".  This is a working cattle ranch and very much shows the marks of a well tended, sustainable ranching operation.  It is funny to me that the groups who knee-jerk demonize livestock grazing on public lands sell this working ranch as "wilderness".  They apparently can't handle that this ranch has all these environmental benefits and habitats intact and has also supported centuries of livestock grazing.  The truth is that as the "wilderness" parks go in and the cattle come off you can pretty much count on an increase in noxious weed cover and a loss if habitat diversity.  So often, environmentalist come in an area like this and think the plants and wildlife are there "in spite" of the grazing use - they kick the cattle off and expect some fabled return to some imagined pristine state.  Instead they lose the native perennial grasses and get nothing but weeds, lose the wildflowers and lose a lot of the benefits of the water sources around the ranch.

Its ironic that if the NRDC, Sierra Club and especially the Center for Biological Diversity did not spend so much energy in an ill informed fight against livestock grazing in the west in there effort to preserve "wilderness" and instead supported agricultural as a way of preserving these places - there may have been no need for compromise.  Maybe Tejon Ranch would have been happy staying Tejon Ranch, an intact working livestock operation.

One specific comment: it was the cattle and ranchers that removed the native grasses from the West to begin with.  To claim that cattle are needed in order to maintain native grasses is absolutely ludicrous.

ironic that if the NRDC, Sierra Club and especially the Center for Biological Diversity did not spend so much energy in an ill informed fight

There is no irony in this. It was the possibility of a "fight" with NRDC, Sierra, et al that brought Tejon around after a few years. Its not over though. Only 170,000 acres have been protected. 60k now have the option of purchase by the public. Check the article below: "plans still must be approved by state and federal regulatory authorities, as well as Los Angeles and Kern counties."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/los_angeles_metro/la-me ... 0, 759061.story

"The agreement guarantees Tejon Ranch Co. the right to proceed with massive development projects near Interstate 5: Centennial, a planned community of 23, 000 homes east of Quail Lake in northern Los Angeles County; and Tejon Mountain Village in southern Kern County, which will include a resort featuring spas and boutique hotels, commercial space, golf courses and 3, 400 estate homes. The Tejon Industrial Complex in the Kern County portion of the ranch is already home to IKEAâ€^TMs 2-million-square-foot main distribution warehouse, among others."

As a professional land manager in Southern California I can say with some practical experience that the removal of livestock from these types of grasslands does not yield any environmental benefits. Instead it will lead to a loss of native plant diversity and an abundance of non-native annual grasses.

My other point is that these type of landscapes could be preserved in their entirety if environmental groups fought to preserve sustainable uses like extensive livestock grazing instead of fighting for "wilderness".

1. The cattle industry has done more ecological harm to the western U.S. than any other industry, some people claim more than all others put together.  Tell us, Mr. "land manager," how could removal of non-native livestock not yield any ecological benefits?  More fundamentally, how could huge, heavy, non-native animals that graze very heavily not be a huge ecological disaster for the western grasses, which did not evolve with grazers?  And please don't confuse things, the native ungulates are browsers, not grazers.

2. What the cattle industry and their lackeys now claim is that without grazing, the non-native grasses, with which THEY replaced the native ones, would take over even more than they now have.  This is a half truth; yes, cattle graze some non-native grasses, but they also do great harm by their grazing of native grasses that did not evolve to be any more than lightly grazed by a small number of browsers that were kept moving and at low numbers by native predators.  A much better approach for the western grasslands would be to totally remove all non-natives, like cattle and sheep, and create a huge public works-type project that has people pulling non-native grasses out by their roots and replanting the natives.  This would be far better work for the planet than that of ranchers, "land managers," and the military, just to name a few.

3. Due to their immense weight and numbers compared to the native ungulates, cattle also compact the soil, adding to their destruction of western grasslands.

4. There are many other harms in addition to destruction of the grasses that non-native ungulates cause, such as destruction of riparian ecosystems.

5. It has been shown, first in Yellowstone, now in Yosemite, that only with top predators keeping ungulates naturally low in numbers and moving will ecosystems be healthy.  So, even if western grasses evolved to be heavily grazed by heavy animals, the number of cattle and sheep would need to be strictly limited, they would need to roam free and unfenced, and ranchers would have to allow significant predation by native predators, such as mountain lions, wolves, and coyotes.  This is so likely that I can easily envision ranchers lining up to agree to it!

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/20 ...