GAVIOTA PRESERVES
Protecting extraordinary places on the Gaviota Coast
Through acquisition, restoration, and long-term stewardship, we secure the lands that sustain the Gaviota Coast—for generations to come.
Our Mission
Our mission is to acquire, restore, and care for extraordinary lands on the Gaviota Coast whose future cannot be taken for granted. We bring conservation, regenerative agriculture, and thoughtful community engagement together so these places remain protected, productive, and alive for generations to come.
RANCHO TAJIGUAS PRESERVE
A living landscape in transition
Acquired by the Gaviota Coast Conservancy for conservation in 2024, Rancho Tajiguas Preserve encompasses 3,272 acres, including the entire Tajiguas Creek watershed, working orchards and ranchlands, exceptional wildlife habitat, and a historic Hacienda.
Once a private retreat and conventional agricultural property, the Preserve is entering a new chapter. Gaviota Preserves is building the philanthropic support and stewardship capacity needed to secure its future—restoring ecological health, advancing regenerative agriculture, caring for the historic landscape, and creating thoughtful opportunities for people to experience and learn from the land.
Our History
Gaviota Preserves was created to build the philanthropic support and long-term stewardship capacity needed to secure the future of Rancho Tajiguas Preserve. Our work builds on Gaviota Coast Conservancy’s September 2024 acquisition of this 3,272-acre landscape, encompassing the Tajiguas Creek watershed, native habitats, working agricultural lands, and historic resources.
Gaviota Preserves is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation recognized as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3). Our initial focus is raising funds to retire the Preserve’s acquisition debt and support its enduring conservation and stewardship. Gaviota Coast Conservancy owns the property. Gaviota Preserves provides essential funding for the Preserve’s operations and is working to secure its enduring conservation and stewardship.
Our Work and Public Benefit
Gaviota Preserves is building the financial support and institutional capacity needed for lasting conservation on the Gaviota Coast. Our initial focus is Rancho Tajiguas Preserve and the long-term future of its watershed, wildlife habitats, working lands, and historic landscape.
Our current work centers on cultivating philanthropic partnerships, raising funds to retire the Preserve’s acquisition debt, and providing the financial support that sustains its operations and stewardship. Gaviota Coast Conservancy owns the property, while Gaviota Preserves is building the funding and institutional capacity needed to secure its long-term future.
The conservation outcomes we seek include healthier native habitats and watersheds, agricultural practices that improve soil health and ecological resilience, and preservation of the landscape’s historic and cultural resources.
Our long-term vision includes appropriately managed opportunities for education, research, and community engagement. These opportunities will be developed as resources, conservation needs, and management arrangements allow.
This work serves present and future generations by helping safeguard an intact coastal landscape and the ecological and cultural values it holds.
Our Vision
Rancho Tajiguas Preserve offers a vision of what lasting conservation on the Gaviota Coast can become: a place where extraordinary natural beauty, ecological restoration, working agriculture, cultural heritage, and public learning flourish together.
Its 3,272 acres encompass an entire coastal watershed within a globally significant biodiversity hotspot. Native habitats and historic structures share the landscape with avocado and persimmon orchards and hundreds of acres of grazing lands. Soil-building and carbon sequestration activities are underway, and a conservation easement is being developed to strengthen the property’s permanent protection.
We envision thoughtfully managed public access and educational opportunities that allow people to experience this spectacular landscape and understand the relationships among healthy watersheds, wildlife, agriculture, climate, and human history.
Retiring the acquisition debt will create the foundation for enduring stewardship and allow this work to grow. As these efforts mature, Gaviota Preserves can become an institution equipped to hold and manage additional conservation properties on the Gaviota Coast.
Our vision reaches beyond a single preserve: a growing network of protected landscapes, each cared for according to its distinctive character, together sustaining the coast’s biodiversity, working lands, and opportunities for discovery—for present and future generations.
PARTICIPATE NOW
The Founding Stewardship Fund
Between now and December 31, Gaviota Preserves is seeking $250,000 to support Rancho Tajiguas Preserve through this pivotal period of stewardship and transition. These funds will help sustain ecological restoration, regenerative agriculture, care of the watershed and historic landscape, and the capacity required to manage the Preserve responsibly.
This is a defined immediate objective within a much larger effort to secure Rancho Tajiguas permanently. A gift today is a first act of participation—an opportunity to help cultivate the land, the institution, and the enduring community benefit this extraordinary place can provide.
$250,000
IMMEDIATE STEWARDSHIP GOAL
Through December 31, 2026
A defined first objective within the broader campaign to secure Rancho Tajiguas Preserve for generations to come.