Fostering Partnerships: Celebrating Conservation Successes in California's Iconic Ranches

This spring, LegacyWorks celebrated the culmination of five years of work with three major conservation victories in California. Collectively, the projects protected nearly 39,000 acres across three ranches in California from the Sierra Foothills to the northern Sierra Madre to the Coastal Range. It was an honor to be invited into partnership on these projects with multiple conservation organizations, several ranching families, and a diverse array of donors and impact investors. In each case, LegacyWorks played critical behind-the-scenes roles from negotiating and facilitating complex partnerships to structuring bridge loans and financing. 

In 2021, White Buffalo Land Trust, then a fledgling nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture, approached us to help them take a huge leap forward through the acquisition of the 1,000-acre Jalama Canyon Ranch on the Gaviota Coast in Santa Barbara County. We worked closely with their team over the course of a year to help shape their strategy and messaging, launch the campaign, engage The Nature Conservancy, and advance the acquisition. White Buffalo’s talented and entrepreneurial team met with great success, creating momentum and securing commitments, but raising more than $6 million to acquire the property and fund transaction costs was highly ambitious for a relatively new nonprofit. So we brought together a group of funders and structured a loan to bridge the expected gap between the funds raised and the purchase price at the closing. Four years on, White Buffalo Land Trust has grown tremendously and is doing great work at the ranch and far beyond. The team recently made the last payments on the loan, bringing five years of partnership to a successful close and giving us reason to celebrate together!

This spring, we also celebrated the protection and continued family stewardship of nearly 38,000 acres across two iconic California ranches that have been stewarded for decades by the Morrison family. Protecting the two ranches emerged as the best strategy to keep the ranches in family ownership while meeting the financial needs of the larger family corporation. LegacyWorks was brought in to help structure bridge funding for the projects, and we ended up playing a variety of supporting roles to help ensure the ranches were protected and remained in family ownership. For several years, our team worked closely with several arms of the family, the family corporation, three conservation organizations, and everyone’s legal teams to navigate a complex set of transaction needs, adapt to unexpected challenges, and craft solutions that worked for everyone. 

In April, we joined the Morrison family and the Sierra Foothill Conservancy in the southern Sierra Foothills to honor the protection and continued family ownership of the 10,361-acre Waltz Turner Ranch. The ranch is critical to the regional ranch economy and contains high-value grasslands, riparian areas, wetlands, and vernal pools that require grazing to survive. The ranch also serves as a critical connection between protected areas on the valley floor and Sequoia National Park, national forests, and wilderness areas in the Sierras. LegacyWorks played a key role in securing agreements, providing financing, and holding the property purchase agreement until The Nature Conservancy was able to step into interim ownership. TNC played that role for the period of time required for the family and Sierra Foothill Conservancy to negotiate the terms of the conservation easement, secure state funding, and close the easement that now protects the property. With the easement in place, ownership of the protected ranch transferred back to the Morrison family to continue their multi-generation stewardship of this California gem. 

At the Waltz-Turner Ranch celebration, Sierra Foothill Conservancy executive director Bridget Fithian said, “We had some incredible partners come to the table to help us. LegacyWorks was instrumental in helping us bridge our timing gap as we worked to complete the conservation easement and secure the funding needed to conserve the land. They put up a chunk of funding and helped bring in the Nature Conservancy to play a key role. They really believed in the project - they knew we were going to get it done.”

In May, we gathered with the Morrison Family again in southern San Luis Obispo County, this time to celebrate the protection of 27,512 acres of the Camatta Ranch. The Camatta Ranch is key to the region’s ranching and recreation economies and is home to endangered wildlife and plants. It is so vast it encompasses whole ecosystems. The Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County worked closely with the Morrisons and several California state funding sources for years to craft the overarching strategy that ultimately protected the ranch. LegacyWorks was brought in to arrange bridge funding, but ended up playing roles as a consultant and advisor, helping steward the broader partnership between the land conservation organizations and the family forward in a variety of ways. Ultimately, bridge funding was not needed, thanks to funds made available through the Waltz-Turner Ranch conservation easement sale and direct support from the Wildlife Conservation Board, the Strategic Growth Council’s SALC program, the California Coastal Conservancy, and private donors. The Land Conservancy noted: “This conservation easement would not have been possible without the involvement of multiple partners, including the Nature Conservancy and LegacyWorks Group.” 

Together, the multi-year, many-phase transaction that protected nearly 38,000 acres across the Waltz-Turner and Camatta Ranches was the most complex, multifaceted real estate transaction we have seen. None of it would have been possible without a few key LegacyWorks donors and investors stepping up to provide the funding needed at critical moments. We are immensely grateful for them and for the Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo, the Sierra Foothill Conservancy, and the Morrison Family for bringing us in to support their beautiful work. Helping make projects like these successful is precisely why we launched our impact finance and consulting initiatives. 

You can learn more about each of the projects through the stories below: 

Camatta Ranch - https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article288117780.html

Waltz-Turner Ranch - https://mercedcountytimes.com/sierra-foothill-conservancy-successfully-protects-le-grands-morrison-ranch/