The Olympia Watershed is 180 acres – one chunk of roughly 2,000 acres of land the San Lorenzo Valley Water District owns and manages in the Santa Cruz Mountains. “To me, this is a great example of PG&E maintaining its commitment to supporting the public and the environment,” said Matt Brown, principal land consultant with PG&E. The utility also funded the planting of native wildflowers, oaks and rushes - giving endemic species a fighting chance to reestablish. PG&E has committed to finance up to $300,000 for the next five years to continue the work. That water infrastructure has become critical in the wake of the CZU August Lightning Complex fire. “With all the French broom we had before - it would easily carry a fire up into the canopy - which would threaten the infrastructure as well as the habitat,” McGraw said. The thick woody trees and overgrown shrubs that were cleared would have also readily spread wildfire, McGraw said. Those nonnatives not only zap resources from native plant and animal communities but infringe upon sensitive Sandhill habitat. Those species making home at the Olympia Watershed include what McGraw calls “biodiversity icons”: seven species found only in the Santa Cruz Sandhills, such as the Santa Cruz kangaroo rat and the Zayante band-winged grasshopper.Ĭrews removed roughly 6 acres of French broom and cleared an additional 1.25-acre area of other invasive species including acacia trees, pampas grass and Portuguese broom. “… having the ability to open up habitat and maintain corridors for species that we really do stand a chance to lose otherwise - it’s a really great project.”Ĭonservation ecologist Jodi McGraw points to French broom seedlings that will continue to be monitored and removed on Olympia Watershed lands in Felton.
“This project is hugely important for maintaining species populations that are in decline due to habitat degradation and now climate change,” said Conservation ecologist Jodi McGraw, a consultant on the project. The work significantly reduces wildfire risk on the property – and by proxy for the surrounding Zayante community of Felton – but also revitalizes habitat for native plant and animal communities. This month, the district finished the first phase of a multiyear restoration project funded by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., removing more than 7 acres of invasive trees and shrubs on Olympia Watershed lands. Here, the San Lorenzo Valley Water District is working to steward the land, while also extracting that increasingly coveted resource. Amongst species found nowhere else in the world – like the Mount Hermon June beetle and Ben Lomond spineflower - an invaluable Santa Cruz County resource is also harvested: drinking water. FELTON – Next to the Zayante Fire Station, hidden just out of view, lie acres of precious Santa Cruz Sandhill habitat.
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