A swatch of picturesque open space in the Santa Cruz Mountains that could one day help connect the Bay Area Ridge Trial has been acquired and set aside for protection by conservationists.
On Tuesday, the Peninsula Open Space Trust announced it had purchased a historic 1,921-acre ranch in the range’s eastern foothills in Santa Clara County for $24 million. The parcel, called Mead Ranch, is wedged between a pair of open space preserves west of Morgan Hill within a grassy, oak-studded landscape that conservationists have highlighted as a critical corridor for ranging wildlife like mountain lions, which were recently listed as a threatened species in California.
The newly acquired property fits like a puzzle piece into a patchwork of 50,000 acres of open space in and around the South Bay’s Coyote Valley, the narrow lowland area where the Santa Cruz Mountains meet the southern tail of the Diablo Range. POST has purchased and helped conserve several large parcels there in recent years…