Preserving Hearst's California ranch an expensive proposition

SAN SIMEON, Calif. -- The animals at Hearst Ranch are walking, swimming and flying history lessons, both of California's disappearing ecosystems and the exotic interests of its famous former owner.

The zebras that media tycoon William Randolph Hearst brought here still roam, sharing the rolling grasslands with a cattle operation that dates to the 1860s. Endangered steelhead trout and threatened red-legged frogs swim in some of the last free-flowing California coastal streams.

The 83,000-acre property, one of the state's most ecologically diverse expanses of undeveloped land, is close to being preserved forever as a working cattle ranch. But it won't come cheap.

In August, the Hearst Corp. began six months of exclusive negotiations with The Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund to sell development rights for the ranch.

Crafting a conservation deal will require state, federal and private funding -- an early estimate was between $200 million to $300 million. And environmentalists say the media conglomerate is trying to use land-use loopholes to drive up the price.

Current law allows property owners to greatly increase the appraised value of their land by adjusting land lot lines drawn more than a century ago. Readjustments, for example, can allow development of less habitable land.

The landowners can do this as long as they can find maps dating before 1893 with valid lot lines, and only if they end up with the same number of lots.

All this could change under a bill before Gov. Gray Davis, who must sign or veto by Oct. 14.

The bill would greatly restrict lot-line adjustments, significantly reducing the potential value of the 279 lots that were subdivided on the Hearst Ranch nearly 150 years ago. Hearst Corp. has obtained the certificates of compliance needed to validate those lots but hasn't yet tried to change the lot lines.

Stephen Hearst, vice president and general manager of the company's land holdings, said he doesn't know how the legislation would affect the price of the development rights. He said the bill would inflict the greatest pain on owners of smaller parcels.

Environmentalists say it is important to protect the ranch 200 miles north of Los Angeles because it is a treasure trove of species diversity, including six types of oak. In recent years, the ranch's coastline has become home to thousands of elephant seals.

Its best known monument is Hearst Castle, which draws more than 850,000 visitors a year.

The ranch's topography ranges from tide pools and coastal terraces to grasslands and oak woodlands.

to hardwood forests in the Santa Lucia Range.

"It's almost a snapshot of what California used to be," said Kara Smith, Central Coast project manager for The Nature Conservancy. "It captures just about every habitat type in California."

The California Coastal Commission in 1998 rejected a proposal to build a luxury golf resort on the ranch, but the company may still try to build on 258 acres zoned for development.

Hearst said he believes people could get behind a smaller-scale project for hotel and retail space near Hearst Castle's visitor center and San Simeon Village, a nearby tourist town.

"There's a lot of emotion surrounding some relatively modest development, and the emotion comes from both sides," he said. "There's just as much devotion about having such a development. We will work to find a balance."

Opponents are just as clear. Said Doug Buckmaster, president of Friends of Ranchland: "If there's any development at all, even one-half or one-quarter of a percent, we're against it."

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On the Net:

Hearst Corp.: http://www.hearst.com

The Nature Conservancy: http://www.tnc.org

The Conservation Fund: http://www.conservationfund.org