New Acquisitions for the San Dieguito River Park

With the assistance of its two partners, The Trust for Public Land and the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy, the River Park acquired two important properties in July.

The first, an important coastal property, was acquired with the invaluable assistance of The Trust for Public Land. This property, 75 acres known as the Boudreau property, is located west of El Camino Real, south of the San Dieguito River. Our plans are to expand the tidal and non-tidal restoration project that we are working on with Southern California Edison to the new property.

To illustrate the value of the Boudreau property as an expansion of the wetland restoration project, the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy hired a biologist to prepare a restoration design for the property. The Boudreau piece is on the far right (east of the property colored pink) in the diagram below. The diagonal line through it is an SDGE transmission line. Yellow indicates native grassland, teal is coastal sage scrub, green is riparian, red is seasonal salt marsh and orange is transitional salt marsh.

We will seek grants or find partners who need mitigation habitat to implement the restoration design. This acquisition was truly made possible through the efforts of The Trust for Public Land. Alex Tynberg, TPL's project manager, helped assemble the funding package and handled the negotiations. Both TPL and the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy are critical partners in our efforts to preserve wildlife corridors and habitat and protect the watershed in the San Dieguito River Valley.

A second key property recently acquired was the Crowder property in San Pasqual Valley. This property, also 75 acres, is a prominent hill just west of the Wild Animal Park. It is surrounded almost entirely by property that is owned by the San Diego Water Department. The cactus-covered hills are home to cactus wren and California gnatcatcher. The negotiations on this property were handled by the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy.

The Boudreau property was bought with funds from the State Coastal Conservancy and the State Wildlife Conservation Board (Propositions 12 and 40). The Crowder property was bought with funds from the State Wildlife Conservation Board (Proposition 12).