As I cruised down Highway 101 heading south past San Jose, the gray Silicon Valley office parks transitioned into green and brown agricultural landscapes. It’s here that I arrived in the Coyote Valley, the narrowest stretch between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range. This corridor hosts thousands of acres of farms, orchards and ranches. It’s also a biodiversity hotspot, with 1.1 million acres of wildlife habitat sandwiched between the two mountain ranges.
My destination for the day was the 1,859-acre Máyyan Ooyákma – Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve, which opened to the public in August 2023. “Máyyan Ooyákma” means “Coyote Ridge” in the Muwekma Ohlone language — the tribe helped rename the preserve as part of an effort to promote awareness, justice and equity for the displacement of these people from the land.
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