Area: 1,957 acres
Location: Los Angeles & Ventura Counties, California
Date Acquired: 2025
Acquisition Type: CNLM holds a long-term management agreement and a Conservation Easement to protect the Preserve’s conservation values in perpetuity. The Preserve is privately owned.
Key Habitats: Cismontane alkali marsh, valley wildrye grassland, southern cottonwood-willow forests, coastal sage scrub, chamise chaparral, California walnut woodland, valley oak woodland
Species of Special Interest to CNLM: slender mariposa lily (Calochortus clavatus var. gracilis), Ojai navarretia (Navarretia ojaiensis), southwestern pond turtle (Actinemys marmorata pallida), southern California rufous-crowned sparrow (Aimophila ruficeps canescens), mountain lion (Puma concolor)
Introduction
The Newhall Ranch High Country Preserve (High Country Preserve) was established in 2025, as the first of many expected phases of open space protection in the area. The Preserve is bisected by Salt Creek, an ephemeral creek that drains into the Santa Clara River.
Conservation Significance
Because of its size, location, and varied topography, the Newhall Ranch High Country Preserve is an important area for numerous species of concern as well as many local, transient, and migratory species. The Preserve falls within Los Angeles County’s Significant Ecological Area (SEA) 23, the Santa Susana Simi/Hills area, an area noted for being a large contiguous stretch of relatively undisturbed open space, supporting varied sensitive plant communities and wildlife, and acts as an important linkage for wildlife movement between multiple other open spaces, from the Los Padres National Forest to the north, the San Gabriel mountains to the east, and the Santa Monica Mountains to the southwest.
Within the canyons and on the hilltops surrounding the creek are dense thickets of coastal sage scrub, chamise-chaparral, coast live oak woodland, California walnut woodland, and California annual grasslands. These habitats are characteristic of region and their remoteness from outside human disturbances enables them to support an array of sensitive and rare pollinators, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals.
Our Work
Management of the Preserve is guided by a Long-term Management Plan, a Conservation Easement, and multiple other founding documents. Our work focuses on protecting the sensitive species and habitats present within the Preserve, as well as ensuring that this crucial habitat linkage maintains its value for transient and migratory species.
Management of the Preserve includes monitoring, maintaining, and improving habitat conditions to support plant and wildlife species found within it. Our activities include monitoring wildlife movement and tracking species diversity, managing non-native invasive plants, restoring native plant communities, and removing or reducing threats (such as impacts associated with long-term drought or wildfire).
Public Access
The Preserve is currently closed to public access. However, it is expected that ownership of the Preserve will be transferred to a multi-agency management authority, and after which time a pedestrian trail will become open to the public for low impact recreational and educational activities that are consistent with the Preserve’s conservation values.
For information and inquiries please contact:
For information about the Newhall Ranch High Country Preserve or the Center for natural Lands Management, please contact the Preserve Manager, Brigit Harvey-Ayers, at bhayers@cnlm.org or 661.206.1284.