Gaze out from Mount Diablo on a crisp winter day and you will see rolling hills and woodlands extending all the way to the horizon. Although nearly seven million people live in the nine-county region which contains this peak, the most prominent landmark in the East Bay, much of what you see appears free of human imprint. Long ridges sweep from southeast to northwest, some cloaked in redwoods, some covered with grass and dotted with oaks. You’re looking at much of the San Francisco Bay Area’s protected open space, which adds up to about a million acres.

Look down, however, and you’re likely to see traffic backups on Highway 4, I-580, I-680, and—well, just about every highway. Subdivisions, malls, and office parks have filled most of the valley floors, and fingers of development are creeping up a great many canyons.

At this time, wittingly and otherwise, the inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay region are in the process of determining whether the array of ridges visible from Mount Diablo will be reduced to isolated green fragments within urban sprawl or will survive as a connected landscape. Islands of open space may be pretty, but they can not sustain wildlife, native vegetation, and agriculture while also enabling a growing population to experience nature—even wilderness—close to home. To secure a connected landscape, much more open space must be permanently protected—and soon. This is the judgement of the Bay Area Open Space Council, a consortium of more than 50 nonprofit organizations and public agencies at all levels of government working to acquire and manage urban and regional parks, open space, and agricultural lands and easements. Last September, at its annual conference, the Council announced this goal: to protect another million acres by 2028, on top of the million or so acres the public has already secured for posterity.

The Council was formed in 1990 to maximize the effectiveness of the individual members’ land conservation efforts. Unlike most cooperative groups, which tend to start out by trying to develop a master plan—a process that takes time and can split a group into factions—the Council moved right into the heart of the matter: how to generate more funding for the kind of regionally significant projects the members wanted to do.

The first major victory, in 1997, was to create a Bay Area Conservancy program within the Coastal Conservancy. Legislation sponsored by Senator Byron Sher expanded the scope and jurisdiction of the Coastal Conservancy, giving the agency the specific responsibility to manage a program of projects and grants in the nine Bay counties. During the next six years, the Council worked to raise money. Cumulative authorized funding for the Bay Area Conservancy program is now up to $125 million.

Only after working together for a decade did the Council decide it was time to set specific goals for the entire region, so as to keep pace with population growth.

A Modest Goal

Considering that it took over 100 years to protect the first million acres of park and habitat lands, a goal to double that acreage in one-fourth of that time is ambitious. Yet this is no grand scheme, nor is it a visionary leap of faith into the unknown. This goal, like the Council itself, is the cumulative outgrowth of many small plans and projects, built on its members’ past achievements. Indeed this goal, although bold, is exemplary in its modesty.

In the past, land conservation almost always meant public acquisition. During the past decade, however, about half of all new land protection in the Bay Area has taken place on private lands, with the use of conservation easements negotiated by both land trusts and public agencies. Government simply can’t own and manage enough land to achieve today’s conservation needs. In addition to preserves and parks, the Open Space Council is looking to protect working landscapes, where it supports a balance between private profit making and public resource protection.

The million-acre goal, expected to cost roughly $5 billion, is modest when compared, for example, to what the region is prepared to spend for other purposes. Over the next 25 years the Regional Transportation Plan, adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, proposes spending over $108 billion for transportation projects—over 20 times more than the estimated bill for open space.

It is a modest goal measured in terms of need and urgency. Statistics and personal experience tell us we have at most two decades before population growth and sprawl make further large-scale conservation a moot issue. Scientific study has established the high ecological value of Bay Area habitats, and there is little doubt that significant and irreplaceable resources will be lost should we fail to act. Bay Area residents have shown time and again that they value open space. When Proposition 40, the most recent statewide park, open space, and water bond, went to the ballot in March 2002, it was passed by 64 percent of Bay Area voters (compared to 57 percent statewide).

JOHN WOODBURY has been the director of the Bay Area Open Space Council since 1993. He earlier worked for the Oakland City Council, as a planner for the City of Alameda, and as a community development coordinator for the City of Concord.