Santa Lucia Chapter: Carrizo Plain Natural Area

Carrizo Plain National Monument

Selby Rocks on the Carrizo Plains

2007 Developments
Carrizo Plain National Monument Overseers
Carrizo Plain Overview
An Apparent Past
Human History
The Underground Landscape
Looking Back, Going Forward
How to Get There
Lodging and Camping Facilities
Additional Information

What's New in 2007

In the spring of 2007, the Bureau of Land Management renewed the
long-delayed planning process for Carrizo Plain National Monument, including
the preparation of a broad environmental impact statement. This "scoping
process" is to address the circumstances and values inherent in management
of the 250,000 acres of public lands contained within the Carrizo Plain
National Monument, an important unit of the National Landscape Conservation
System (NLCS).
The designation of National Monuments, together with the establishment
of the NLCS, represents the cornerstone of a new era in land stewardship.
The eyes of the nation will be focused on the results achieved, and on the
BLM's ability to fulfill this new mission of stewardship to: "conserve,
protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes that have
outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values for the benefit of
current and future generations."
Read the comments of The Wilderness Society, Los Padres
ForestWatch, Sierra Club, California Wilderness Coalition, Defenders of
Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity, Californians for Western
Wilderness, Western Watersheds, and Natural Resources Defense Council on the
scope of the process that BLM should undertake to protect this priceless
natural landscape in San Luis Obispo County.

Carrizo Plain National Monument Overseers

The 180,000-acre Carrizo Plain National Monument is owned and cooperatively managed by The Nature Conservancy the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Department of Fish and Game.

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Carrizo Plain Overview

Pocketed between the coastal ranges of eastern San Luis Obispo County lies the austere, yet inviting, Carrizo Plain. Here in this remote part of California where ravens dip and rise with play of the wind and wildflowers color the hills each spring, it's still possible to look out over hundreds of miles of open space and to watch stars spread across a dark sky. If you're lucky, you may even trade glances with a curious kit fox before she ducks underground.

There is, on the Carrizo a wildness--wildness on a scale that allows us to imagine what much of California was like 300 years ago. Known to the Spanish as "Llano Estero," or salt marsh plain, this arid and treeless basin harbors the largest remaining example of habitats that were once abundant in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Most of the surviving habitat is protected within the boundaries of the 180,000-acre Carrizo Plain National Monument where an array of rare plants and animals, including the greatest concentration of threatened and endangered vertebrates in the state, continue to thrive.

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An Apparent Past

Physical forces began shaping the Carrizo into a distinct geographic feature about 30 million years ago. As the bordering Temblor and Caliente mountains were pushed upward, movements along the San Andreas and San Juan faults caused the land in between to subside, forming a closed basin. Runoff from the adjacent slopes collected there creating a vast lake which gradually filled with rich, soil-forming sediments that support life on the plain today.

Soda Lake, the centerpiece of the plain, is all that remains of this prehistoric sea. One of the largest undisturbed alkali wetlands in the state, the 3,000-acre lake provides important habitat for migratory birds, including shorebirds, waterfowl and a quarter of the state's wintering sandhill crane population. With no outlet, the water that pools in the lake during the winter evaporates leaving behind a glistening expanse of sulfate and carbonate salts that appear to ripple and sway in the heat waves of summer.

View of Soda Lake

The San Andreas Fault, Wallace Creek

Nowhere does the Carrizo flaunt its geologic past as it does on the northeastern edge of the plain where the San Andreas Fault cuts through the foot of the Temblors. Here stream channels suddenly shift up to one-half mile north as they cross the fault line, and fault-trimmend ridges rise sharply from plain to form the Panorama and Elkhorn Hills. This complex and corrugated topography, the most spectacular along the fault's 650 mile long corridor, is best viewed in the long, soft shadows of early morning and late afternoon.

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Human History

Much of the Carrizo's human history, like its geologic past, can be read directly from the land. The bedrock mortars and elaborate pictographs that can be seen at Painted Rock provide colorful evidence that both Chumash and Yokut Indians frequented the area in prehistoric times. Probably attracted to the game-rich Carrizo grasslands for hunting and gathering as well as trading and ceremonial purposes, these native peoples experienced an environment that underwent dramatic changes when herds of livestock from the Spanish missions began to graze the land in the early 1880s.

Great herds of horses, cattle and sheep thrived on the diverse vegetation. Eventually this overgrazing destroyed much of the native flora. Seeds of exotic plants, many of which were inadvertently carried in the hair, wool and feet of the Spanish livestock, found the overgrazed range a perfect place to germinate and grow. Today, more than half the grasses and other flowers that bloom on the Carrizo each spring, as in most grasslands across the state ar plants native to Europe and Asia.

Dryland grain farming joined ranching as a major human use of the Carrizo Plain in 1885, when the first homesteaders began to settle here. In was not until 1912, however, and the advent of mechanized agriculture, that large-scale farming became possible. In the years between the two world wars, vast acres of grassland were put under the plow even though the Carrizo's limited and unpredictable rainfall, averaging 8-10" per year, made such ventures risky. The plow lines visible along the foothills bordering the plain serve as reminders of those human days.

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The Underground Landscape

A combination of many burrowing animals, deep-rooted plants and microscopic organisms, such as bacteria and fungi, make the soil one of the most dynamic habitats of the Carrizo. Coyotes, kit foxes, ground squirrels and kangaroo rats are just a few of the animals that excavate burrows to escape predators and the relentless summer sun. Their old and deserted burrows, in turn, provide homes for a host of earth dwellers, including the burrowing owls, blunt-nosed leopard lizards, rattlesnakes, tarantulas and legions bombardier beetles.

Burrowing animals do more than find protection when they dig underground. By turning and mixing large quantities of soil, fertilizing it with their waste, and dispersing seeds, they also play an important role in maintaining plant communities on the Carrizo.

Like animals, more than half of the plant life on the Carrizo is hidden below ground. Native perennial plants, such as common saltbush and desert needlegrass, survive the drying effects of the Carrizo's sun and wind by tapping deep water sources with their enormous root systems. This strategy is markedly different from that of the shallow rooted annual plants, which escape the Carrizo's harsh environment by flowering, setting seed and dying before the dry summer heat sets in.

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Looking Back, Going Forward

Current management on the Carrizo is designed to protect the endangered species and to reverse some of the effects of previous land uses. Areas once farmed or overgrazed are being revegetated with native grasses, shrubs, and trees, where they are known to have occurred. Herds of tule elk and pronghorn, eliminated by uncontrolled hunting in the late 1800s and early 1900s, have been reintroduced to their former range.

Other steps are being taken to restore the Carrizo Plain to pre settlement conditions. Cattle grazing is being used as a tool to shift the competitive balance between the exotic annual grasses that come up in the early days of spring. Before the later blooming native perennials begin their period of rapid growth the cattle are taken off the range. Years of this type of management should favor the reestablishment and expansion of the Carrizo's native flora.

Natural history studies of the Plain's many imperiled plants and animals are also underway. This research will help shape management strategies for sensitive species, like the blunt-nosed leopard lizard and the California jewel flower, on the Carrizo Plain and elsewhere.

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How to Get There

Via Highway 101, take Hwy. 58 east to Santa Margarita. From there travel 51 miles east to California Valley. Turn right on Soda Lake Road and head south 8 miles to the northern boundary of the Carrizo Plain National Monument. Drive another seven miles on Soda Lake Road to reach the Guy L. Goodwin Education Center for the Carrizo Plains and tours to Painted Rock.

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