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In the largest deal to protect old-growth redwood trees anywhere in California in 20 years, a Bay Area environmental group has purchased a remote 730-acre ancient forest on the Sonoma Coast for a new public park west of Santa Rosa. Not only is it larger than Muir Woods, the property boasts more old-growth redwoods, 319 trees taller than 250 feet, including many that are taller than the 305-foot-high Statue of Liberty, and dating back more than 1,000 years.
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The property was the largest unprotected old-growth redwood forest left in private ownership in the United States. It is known now as the Harold Richardson Redwoods Reserve, after a 96-year-old logger who owned the land but refused for generations to cut down the massive, primeval trees.

Richardson died in 2016. The $18.1 million deal with Save the Redwoods League is set to be announced Tuesday. The new park will be operated by the league and open to hikers for free in about three years, after the organization finishes environmental surveys of the property and builds hiking trails.

In a deal to preserve some of the planet’s rarest and most massive living things, a Bay Area conservation group has signed an agreement to purchase the second-largest grove of giant sequoia trees left in private ownership in the world.

Save the Redwoods League, based in San Francisco, will pay $3.3 million to buy 160 acres of sequoias — some more than 250 feet tall and 1,500 years old — in an area known as the Red Hill property. The trees sit in a remote, mountainous part of Tulare County adjacent to Giant Sequoia National Monument in the Southern Sierra, and survived a logging boom that decimated similar ancient trees from the 1850s through the 1950s.

New redwood park in Santa Cruz Mountains could come from Beall law

Clearing the way for what could potentially be the biggest open space deal in the Santa Cruz Mountains in years, Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a bill that would streamline the sale of up to 6,500 acres of land owned by San Jose Water Company and to become a public open space preserve.

The bill would allow the sale of the land — which includes 1,100 acres of redwood forests and could easily eclipse $30 million in price — to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District without approval from the state Public Utilities Commission. The commission regulates San Jose Water, and its processes are often bureaucratic and slow-moving.

Talks are still in the very early stages.