It’s been a decade since Measure AA asked voters to consider a bond funding the work of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. By Election Day, Midpen had already spent almost two years gathering community input on what exactly that work should be. The resulting Vision Plan detailed 54 project areas, or portfolios, to guide Midpen’s next 40 years of operation.
Looking to voters to help realize that vision was a logical next step for an agency born at the ballot box: the district was established in 1972 by Measure R, the result of a grassroots effort to protect green space as the region’s population grew. Voted on in portions of San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties, Measure AA passed with a 68 percent majority—showing that enthusiasm for conservation in the Bay Area hadn’t waned.
“Voters’ support of Measure AA was a game-changer for Midpen,” says its general manager, Ana María Ruiz. “It’s allowing us to implement the projects our community prioritized as most important. What may be less obvious is how those Measure AA funds help us build partnerships and access additional money—more than $23 million in grants so far—making taxpayer dollars go so much further toward improving quality of life and resilience to climate change in our region.”
With about a third of the $300 million bond spent, Midpen has preserved more than 9,000 additional acres of land, debuted more than 30 miles of new trail, and opened five new areas to the public. Other work is just getting started, or is moving through the middle stages of design and construction. In all, Midpen’s Measure AA strategy includes projects ranging from land acquisition and habitat restoration to new trailheads and parking areas—all in various stages of completion. Here are just a few.
To Do: New Preserve
Overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway across from Pigeon Point Lighthouse in Pescadero, the one-mile walk out to Wilbur’s Watch is currently the only publicly accessible trail at Cloverdale Ranch Open Space Preserve. But thanks to the voters who approved Measure AA, the stage is set for that to change.
At about 6,700 acres, the Cloverdale Ranch property stretches from the ocean to the edge of the redwood forests of the
Santa Cruz Mountains, providing crucial habitat and connectivity for wildlife. Willows and white alders shade the creeks, home to coho salmon, steelhead, and
California red-legged frogs. Endangered seabirds called marbled murrelets fly overhead en route to their inland nesting sites, high up in old-growth trees. Mountain lions and badgers pass through as well.
In spite of the location’s importance to wildlife, in the late ’90s it was slated for luxury homes. To protect it from development, the nonprofit Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) purchased the site. For more than two decades, POST stewarded the property, leasing portions out to farmers and ranchers—but always planned to transfer Cloverdale to public ownership once funding became available. After years of waiting, Measure AA made this possible.
In a $14.7 million deal in June 2023, Midpen officially acquired 5,100 acres of Cloverdale Ranch—and an option to purchase an additional 1,200 acres by 2026. (POST will retain 400 acres of prime agricultural land to continue leasing to farmers.) Measure AA provided $4.8 million of the purchase price, unlocking access to additional grant funding.
The transfer to Midpen is the first step in fully opening a new public open space. It’s a rare occurrence today, in the densely developed Bay Area, for Midpen to acquire a piece of land large enough to become an entirely new preserve. The process will take careful preparation, including gathering input from residents of nearby Pescadero and neighboring ranchers and farmers. Eventually, Midpen trail crews will build more trails for public access, designing the network to serve visitors while protecting sensitive natural resources.
In the meantime, those eager for a glimpse of Cloverdale Ranch can join docent naturalist-led guided hikes—or enjoy the trail to Wilbur’s Watch. It’s quintessential California coastal scrub and grassland, where purple needlegrass grows between patches of coyote brush, coffeeberry, and the occasional Douglas fir. Wildlife that makes this corner of Cloverdale Ranch home includes grasshopper sparrows, burrowing owls, and northern harrier hawks.
Elsewhere on the property, cattle owned by local ranchers graze two areas under the guidance of Midpden’s rangeland ecologist staff. Long before the Spanish arrived here in the 18th century, the Quiroste Ohlone tended the grasslands with prescribed fire and hunted deer and elk that grazed the area. Today, cows serve as a proxy for the interplay of fire and grazing, helping to maintain habitat for species that depend on grassland habitat—like the endangered San Francisco garter snake—by keeping brush in check.
The long-term work of restoring habitat at Cloverdale Ranch began under POST, whose projects included a collaboration with the San Mateo Resource Conservation District to restore fish habitat at Butano Creek. Man-made stock ponds and reservoirs have also become key riparian habitat. Midpen will continue that stewardship at Cloverdale Ranch.
“Now that we manage the land, we need to look at the whole preserve and balance trails, conservation grazing, agriculture, and protected species,” says Midpen spokesperson Leigh Ann Gessner. “We need to make a plan where it all fits together in concert.”
—Austin Price
In Progress: Habitat Restoration
Standing thigh-deep in the cool depths of San Gregorio Creek, Amy Kaeser can catch a glimpse of a grown steelhead trout once or twice a year—plus a few babies, called fry, when they hatch in the spring. Kaeser is the habitat enhancement program manager for the San Mateo Resource Conservation District (RCD), but even to her trained eye, fish sightings here aren’t common.
It hasn’t always been this way. “There are old-timers who will tell you of the time when there were salmon all across the creek coming in to spawn,” Kaeser says. San Gregorio Creek is one of several that run through Midpen’s La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve, located in San Mateo County. These creeks are home to a number of threatened and endangered native species, including the coho salmon and steelhead trout that journey here upstream from the ocean to spawn.
But the area has a long history of logging, and it still shows the scars. Because felled trees were often dragged through creek beds to get them to their final destination, waterways started to look the same: straight and flat at the bottom—or “channelized”—and largely devoid of debris. None of that was good for California fisheries, which continue to struggle: for the second year in a row, the state has opted not to open the salmon fishing season.
“Healthy creeks are messy,” Kaeser explains. Over time, debris helps create deeper, shaded pools that allow fish to hide from predators, while the shallower areas provide resting places. Bends in the creek help slow down the water and create more of this variability in depth. Debris also helps alter the flow of water so that gravel can settle to the stream bottom, creating ideal sites for fish to lay their eggs.
Restoring San Gregorio Creek to health and function is the ambition behind the RCD’s partnership with Midpen. By placing arrangements of logs, rocks, and branches strategically along the creek, they can re-create the variability the fish need to thrive.
“The completed structures look very simple, but they’re actually very engineered,” Kaeser says. Each calls for the expertise of fish biologists, engineers, and construction contractors and can take years to design, permit, budget, and build. However, using funding made available by Measure AA, NOAA, PG&E, and other sources, Midpen and the RCD have been able to finance more than a dozen of these woody debris installations—with more in the works for this summer.
Since completing the first installations in 2016, the team has witnessed the benefits firsthand. Wading through a stretch of the upper San Gregorio Creek, Midpen water resources specialist David Liefert points out three large tree trunks marked by the project’s rebar. Underneath these trunks swirls a deep pool partially shaded by trees. Across the creek, a much shallower bank has developed.
Farther down the creek, a storm has downed several alders, and branches have accumulated against one of the log structures installed with help from Measure AA. That’s just as planned: the tangled foliage forms a cover where young fish can hide from predators.
Liefert and Kaeser agree that seeing the creek change like this over time—and watching fish return, little by little—is one of the most rewarding parts of the project.
“Once you set the stage for these things to happen,” Liefert says, “nature does the rest.”
—Katherine Irving
Done: Bay Trail Connection
Now and then during construction of the new Bay Trail segment that runs through Midpen’s Ravenswood Open Space Preserve, a Ridgway’s rail waded over to inspect the work. Because regulations mandated a pause in construction whenever the endangered species was spotted on the jobsite, a visit from the bird meant workers got a surprise break. They’d set down their tools, switch to standby projects for the prescribed half hour, and pick back up when the rail was gone.
The usually elusive rail “was oblivious to what was going on,” says Scott Reeves, then Midpen’s senior capital project manager for construction. “It was totally unfazed and very curious.”
The bird couldn’t know it, but much of the work underway was designed with its needs in mind. As protection against rising sea levels, the Ravenswood project called for elevating and paving a levee trail, creating “refuge islands” of high ground where marsh birds and animals can shelter at high tide. Revegetating land alongside the levee and nearby residences’ backyards created valuable habitat, too.
The unknowing bird even set the construction schedule. To avoid interfering with its breeding season, Midpen completed the trail-building work during a tight window between September 2019 and January 2020.
It was a sprint following a marathon: 15 years from conception to the ribbon-cutting in August 2020. The project ran the gauntlet of permits, regulations, neighbors’ concerns, and jurisdictional obstacles—including unused rail lines and a water pipeline right-of-way. In addition to Measure AA regional bonds, funding came from other public agencies and a donation from Facebook, whose campus lies across the highway.
“You’re basically threading a needle,” says Reeves. “At every step of the way, there were issues and roadblocks that could have derailed us—but they didn’t.”
Though the project is completed, work goes on. Environmental consultants monitor revegetated areas to ensure that native marsh plants like spartina and gumplant are colonizing well. Crews from the nonprofit Grassroots Ecology visit frequently to help steward the wetlands habitat.
On a spring morning, their volunteers are pruning and weeding along a trail spur leading to East Palo Alto’s Cooley Landing Park and Education Center. The tide is out, and hundreds of shorebirds probe the mudflats as walkers and bike commuters cruise by.
The new Bay Trail segment—which includes 1,000 feet of boardwalk elevated over Ravenswood’s sensitive tidal wetlands—closes a critical gap in what is now an 80-mile stretch of trail running from Sunnyvale to Menlo Park and across the Dumbarton Bridge to the East Bay. It’s a boon for bike commuters like Emily Tutuska and her husband, Ryne, who ride through Ravenswood three to five days a week.
“Dodging cars through East Palo Alto used to be the most dangerous part of our bike commute, and taking the Bay Trail through Ravenswood is much safer and more beautiful,” Emily Tutuska says. “It’s a great place to watch the sun rising over the East Bay hills.”
The Midpen Board of Directors recently approved plans to improve public access to the Bay Trail further, by creating a new trailhead in the East Palo Alto neighborhood adjacent to Ravenswood. For Midpen General Manager Ana María Ruiz, it’s just one example of how Measure AA is shaping the Baylands. “This short but mighty trail segment is connecting multiple communities and cities to open space,” she says, “while also enhancing the tidal marsh habitat to further protect our local endangered Baylands wildlife.”
—Janet Byron
This article was paid for and reviewed by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.
