FALLBROOK: After 20 years and 1,900 acres, nonprofit group still seeking bare land

Conservancy dedicated to keeping town's character rural

By TOM PFINGSTEN - Staff Writer | Sunday, October 26, 2008 7:47 PM PDT ∞

FALLBROOK ---- Buying land in Southern California isn't easy these days.

But it can be especially tricky and time-consuming if you're pulling the lever on a piece of undeveloped property to set aside in a land trust, as Wallace Tucker has done over and over for the last 20 years.

As head of the Fallbrook Land Conservancy, Tucker has seen the nonprofit organization grow to include 1,000 members and 1,848 acres ---- spread throughout 10 preserves in the greater Fallbrook area.

The group's simple mission statement is a vow to preserve and enhance the "rural character and natural beauty of our community," and judging by the amount of open space held by the conservancy, it has succeeded in keeping that promise, founding member Vince Ross said.

"If we stopped right now, we could all be very proud of what we've done," Ross said. "But I think it's even more important now to continue with the goal of maintaining our rural quality of life."

Whether land is bequeathed to the conservancy in a will, handed over as mitigation for an environmentally invasive project elsewhere in the county, or bought at a bargain, the process requires one virtue above all.

"If there's one word that describes what we have to do, it's 'patience,' " said Tucker. "All of these things take years."

How it works

While the conservancy has several preserves in downtown Fallbrook ---- Dinwiddie Preserve off Stage Coach Lane and Los Jilgueros, for example ---- most of the town's remaining open space is on the outskirts, Tucker said.

One of the group's most recent acquisitions is in De Luz, and on the east side of Interstate 15 looms the 300-acre Monserate Mountain preserve.

"The other areas are the creeks ---- Ostrich Farm Creek and anything along there, but those are long, linear pieces of property," he said. "It's more the outskirts where the opportunity is now."

The conservancy can buy, hold and manage land as a nonprofit group, and many of its acquisitions come in the form of donations from an estate.

In other instances, Tucker will negotiate a "bargain sale" with a seller, in which the price is dropped substantially to make the property affordable for the conservancy, with the difference counted as a tax-deductible donation.

In theory, the conservancy's land will be preserved forever, and safeguards are put in place to make sure of it.

"Generally, when we acquire land, we try to specify a backup organization," Tucker said. "That could be the county, or it could be a much larger group, like the Nature Conservancy, that could take care of the land if we somehow went defunct."

Tucker said an endowment set up with the San Diego Foundation is currently worth more than $500,000 to ensure that there also would be money available to manage the land.

Ross, who has served on the board for 20 years, said that he sees an important role for the Fallbrook Land Conservancy in the future.

"I think it's just begun to blossom," Ross said. "What I think we should do is make a case with our local residents, to step up to the plate and say, 'Let's invest in our future if we're concerned about what we're leaving behind.' "

History

As a land buyer for the past two decades, Tucker said he can recall as well as anyone the changes to Fallbrook's size and character since the late 1980s.

"At that point, they were talking about rezoning a lot of Fallbrook for higher-density development, and that sparked quite a controversy ---- many were for it, and many against it," he said. "That got people talking about land use, is what that did."

A group of locals decided to start a land conservancy so that if Fallbrook ever outgrew its rural character, pieces of undeveloped land would be around for generations to come.

Today, Fallbrook is a busier, more densely populated place, but the conservancy has succeeded in setting aside large chunks of open space, several of which are open to public uses such as hiking and sightseeing, Tucker said.

The conservancy also has two special interest groups: the Trails Council, which maintains a network of trails, and Save Our Forest, which organizes several tree-planting projects every year.

"There's been quite a bit more development," Tucker said of the differences between 1988 and 2008. "Some of the large developers have found Fallbrook, but our topography doesn't lend itself to massive tract housing, so we're fortunate that way.

"It may seem to people like we're being inundated with growth, but in fact, I feel like we're winning the game and saving land."

Contrary to what some people assume, one does not have to be an environmentalist to join the conservancy, Tucker said.

"We tend not to take political positions," he said, adding that members have to only agree with the mission statement to sign up.

One of the first acquisitions the conservancy made was the 45-acre Los Jilgueros preserve, just north of Fallbrook High School on South Mission Road, in 1990.

That same year, the group acquired the Palomares House, a historical building off Stage Coach Lane that now houses the conservancy's offices.

When the land conservancy first set out to preserve undeveloped pieces of Fallbrook, only 50 acres out of the approximately 30,000 acres in the area were permanently protected, Tucker said.

Now, the number is closer to 2,000 protected acres, and rising.

"I think we can look forward to getting 10 or 20 percent of our land protected in the future," Tucker said.

Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten at (760) 740-3516 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.