Protecting vernal pools and other important habitat in Western Placer County
Placer Land Trust’s West Placer Habitat Protection Program (WPHPP) is designed to permanently preserve critical vernal pool habitat and other wetlands and associated valley habitat in western Placer County.
Primary funding for the WPHPP is provided by conveyance fees on home sales in the West Roseville Specific Plan (WRSP), and was created in 2005 through a collaborative agreement between environmental groups, public agencies, and developers. Additional funding is provided through state and federal grants, mitigation agreements, and voluntary contributions.
Placer Land Trust was chosen to lead this land conservation program as part of a 2004 settlement agreement regarding the West Roseville Specific Plan. Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Sierra Foothills Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Butte Environmental Council resolved differences with WRSP developers and local and federal government agencies to create the program.
As part of the settlement agreement, the City of Roseville annexed 3,162 acres west of Fiddyment Road (the WRSP area) to be developed into a new community of 8,400 homes amid hundreds of acres of open space.
The goals of Placer Land Trust’s conservation program are to work with willing landowners to preserve vernal pools and associated habitat in western Placer County. Other important lands – such as working farms and ranches, annual grasslands, and riparian areas – and lands that connect them, may also be protected by the program. Very often wetland and grassland habitat coexists nicely with grazing land, offering multiple benefits to the Placer County environment, economy, and quality of life.
“This program is a major step forward for land conservation in western Placer County,” said Jeff Darlington, Placer Land Trust Executive Director, in 2005. “The willingness of developers, environmental groups, and public agencies to come together in support of land conservation is truly commendable and will provide a major boost to conservation in a region where property values are increasingly prohibitive.”
Over 90% of California’s vernal pools have been destroyed by development, and much of what remains is still under threat.
Vernal pools are depressions in flat valley landscapes where a hard underground soil/clay layer prevents rainwater from draining downward into the subsoils. When rain fills the pools in the winter and spring, the water collects and remains in the depressions. This provides critical habitat through late spring when the water gradually evaporates away, and some species continue to live in the pools as they become completely dry in the summer and fall.
Protected vernal pools and associated grasslands provide increasingly critical habitat for endemic rare plant and animal species, including many that are designated by federal and state government as rare, threatened, or endangered such as the Vernal pool fairy shrimp and Swainsons hawk. Vernal pools also provide key feeding stops for waterfowl migrating along the Pacific Flyway.
Placer Land Trust preserved the first two properties as part of the WPHPP in April 2005, : the 427-acre Doty Ravine Preserve and the 469-acre Swainson’s Grassland Preserve, both in the Raccoon Creek watershed north of Lincoln.
In August 2005, the Trust completed the third WPHPP project with the recordation of the 223-acre Reason Farms conservation easement. This project includes vernal pool grassland and riparian habitat along Pleasant Grove Creek near Roseville.
In 2006, Placer Land Trust completed the fourth WPHPP project, protecting 1,000 acres at the Toad Hill Ranch north of Roseville. This property is adjacent to the Reason Farms Environmental Preserve and forms a block of open space and habitat in excess of 2,900 acres.
By 2022, Placer Land Trust also protected two additional projects protecting 1,040 acres of vernal pools and associated habitat, bringing the total of protected acres in the West Placer Habitat Protection Program to 3,159 acres.
In most cases, Placer Land Trust owns these properties and provides the annual and ongoing management and protection of the vernal pool landscapes to benefit wildlife, open space, and agriculture – now and for current and future generations.