Coyote Creek Parkway<\/a>, local officials say that Monterey Pondside also plays a critical role in the overall Coyote Valley linkage \u2013 fortifying Coyote Creek\u2019s resilience and effectiveness as a successful habitat for wildlife movement, including for wildlife moving to and from wildlife crossing locations.<\/p>\n\u201cAcquiring Monterey Pondside helps strengthen Coyote Creek\u2019s role as a wildlife corridor,\u201d said Marian Vernon, wildlife linkages program manager for the trust. \u201cThe key to the success of any future wildlife crossing is preserving undeveloped, natural habitat free from light, noise and human disturbance so that animals can safely use it as an \u2018approach zone\u2019 to a crossing. With its east-west adjacency to protected lands, these 15 acres provide exactly that, as part of a larger tapestry of lands supporting wildlife movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Formerly the site of an orchard, Monterey Pondside consists of parcels that are zoned for agricultural use but are now fallow. The few structures on site are more than 70 years old and no longer functional.<\/p>\n
The property is located directly across the street from lands protected by the trust, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority and the City of San Jose since 2019 and where the authority is currently planning future habitat restoration and public access improvements.<\/p>\n
Coyote Valley sits at a juncture in the regional landscape, connecting 1.1 million acres of habitat in the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range to the east. Protecting the few remaining undeveloped wildlife corridors that still exist between these mountain ranges delivers multiple environmental benefits to the area by protecting the region\u2019s biodiversity and climate resilience. Including safeguarding groundwater recharge, creating buffers from wildfires and reducing downstream flood risk, the trust said in a press release today.<\/p>\n
Monterey Pondside is located immediately south of the former proposed site for the LS Power high-voltage converter station that is now co-located at the existing PG&E substation nearby.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeft unprotected, this agricultural and open space property could easily have become the site of industrial-scale development, such as data centers or battery storage, that is incompatible with wildlife movement. This would have severed one of the last remaining pathways through Coyote Valley for local wildlife moving between the coastal and inland mountain ranges to find food, shelter and mates,\u201d said Andrea Mackenzie, general manager of the authority. \u201cWith our conservation partners, the authority has spent over $160 million protecting over 1,660 acres of open space land in Coyote Valley for public benefit. Protecting these critical linkages through land protection and wildlife infrastructure will secure important ecosystem and community benefits to Santa Clara Valley residents for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peninsula Open Space Trust today announced its purchase of Monterey Pondside, a 15-acre property zoned for agriculture in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[36326,28192,164420,164421,76895,3604,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-410476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-coyote-creek","tag-coyote-valley","tag-coyote-valley-open-space-authority","tag-monterey-pondside","tag-peninsula-open-space-trust","tag-pge","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}