In celebration of LCLT's 30th anniversary we continue OUR STORY. We started with humble beginnings in Part I, then got our feet wet with our first acquisition in Part II, and boldly worked with many to save Rodman Preserve from development in Part III.

In Part IV of Our Story we began our quest to save wetlands in the Big Valley. The next land acquisition for the Lake County Land Trust was the Melo Wetland Preserve on Clipper Lane in the Holiday Cove area of Big Valley. However, before that purchase was made, the Land Trust decided that it needed a Comprehensive Land Protection Plan to outline its top priority areas for protection in order to get government funding.

In 2007, the Lake County Land Trust produced its Land Conservation Priority Plan, (the plan

was updated in 2019) which is the guiding document that the Trust uses to identify priority projects, including the current Big Valley Wetlands protection project which includes the Melo Wetland Preserve, whose purchase was finalized in 2016, and more recently the Wright and Keithly wetland preserves.

(Bold Typed items are clickable)

The Conservation Priorities were developed during two workshops attended by Land Trust board members and 17 experts in local land use and natural resources. Workshop participants were asked to prioritize areas and/or issues they believed, based on their familiarity and experience, most worthy of conservation in light of future threats from development and conversion.



The plan summarizes the Lake County Land Trust’s efforts at identifying and ranking unique areas/ecosystems in Lake County in order to guide conservation prioritization efforts, and identifies a total of 30 distinct conservation-worthy areas/ecosystems.

At that time, three areas were identified to be of highest conservation priority: the Clear Lake shoreline between Clear Lake State Park and south Lakeport (which is the current conservation focus of the Land Trust); Mt. Konocti (now protected by the County) and the Tule Lake/Middle Creek areas upstream of Rodman Slough (protection and restoration of which are being worked on by the county). The Land Trust will continue to revisit its conservation priorities as it makes progress in protecting the important natural lands of Lake County.