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Humboldt Land Donation ‘Missing Piece’ Linking National Park And Coast

Map of properties acquired by Save the Redwoods League
Courtesy of Save the Redwoods League
The "Mistier" and "Nesset" properties were recently acquired by Save the Redwoods League. Along with two other pieces of land they connect a Redwood National Park and Humboldt Lagoon State Park.

The San Francisco-based conservation group Save the Redwoods League announced on Tuesday that they acquired two pieces of property between Redwood National Park and Humboldt Lagoon State Park. Their plan to donate the 90 acres from these and two other former private landholdings would create a contiguous protected area.

“It makes a land bridge, essentially, that goes from all the protected Redwood National Park property, all the way straight to the coast,” says Becky Bremser, director of land protection for Save the Redwoods League. “These were kind of the missing pieces in between.”

Purchasing the property had been in the works for over a decade,  according to Bremser, She says the land is a “high priority” for the National Park Service. Save the Redwoods League is expected to transfer the properties to the national park in 2020.

The League paid $655,000 for the Mistier and Nesset properties. Along with two other previously acquired pieces of land, they total 90 acres.

The goal of protecting this property as a corridor for wildlife species and to prevent future development is not shared by all residents in the nearby community of Orick, California.

“There’s a general feeling that Save the Redwoods League has bought interesting pieces [of land] that have no redwoods on them,” says Donna Hufford, a board member of the Orick chamber of commerce who has lived in the 357-person community for 50 years.

“We have a very small land base here in our community and every potential house site that goes away means less people for our community,” she says.

Bremser says the location between a state and national park make these 90 acres more valuable for conservation purposes than development.

The Save the Redwoods League says it has acquired and transferred more than 140 pieces of property since the 1920s to help build the Redwood National and State Parks.

Erik Neumann is JPR's news director. He earned a master's degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and joined JPR as a reporter in 2019 after working at NPR member station KUER in Salt Lake City.