Coyote Valley, located just south of San José, is a focal area of tremendous environmental significance connecting the biodiversity of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range in the South San Francisco Bay Area. The entire 7,400-acre valley includes natural lands mixed with agricultural, commercial, and residential development. Multiple connectivity assessments have identified Coyote Valley as an essential opportunity for connecting habitats, and field research confirms mammal movement through the valley floor.
Coyote Valley is mostly unprotected, and as it sits adjacent to a large city in one of the fastest growing counties in the Bay Area, it also faces imminent development pressure. The geographical and political complexities associated with Coyote Valley make conservation challenging. These complexities include lack of site control, zoning and development pressure, and extremely high land values. The San José General Plan has identified lands in the northern valley for job creation, which creates competition between two different futures for Coyote Valley.
Another issue is that Coyote Valley is traversed by a network of roads, including the 10-lane Hwy 101 and Monterey Rd, a four-lane road with a median barrier. Hwy 101 is somewhat permeable to wildlife due to underpasses and culverts, but Monterey Rd is a barrier to wildlife movement, as evidenced by wildlife-vehicle collision data and bobcat telemetry data.
Conservation partners are working to protect Coyote Valley by trying to acquire land and plan for large-scale wildlife crossing infrastructure projects. However, stakeholders are working within a shifting landscape with many uncertainties. Challenges include reaching agreement on land use outcomes with local government and private landowners, expensive land transactions needed for wildlife crossing structures, current development proposals, and competing needs for economic development.
Facing the political and financial challenges of conserving a critical wildlife corridor requires a multi-organizational effort. This is addressed through an effective partnership between area conservation partners called the Coyote Valley Subcommittee of the Santa Clara County Wildlife Corridor Technical Working Group. Each partner in the Working Group is uniquely situated to achieve a conservation outcome based on their role. The Working Group has achieved stakeholder outreach, integration and presentation of scientific studies, and on the ground restoration actions that reduce barriers to wildlife movement. This type of innovative collaboration between multiple private and public partners is needed to achieve the vision of a protected and functioning landscape linkage that safeguards the numerous values that Coyote Valley provides for the region. The Working Group provides an effective model to tackle on-the-ground issues, in concert with ongoing conservation strategies being pursued by a broader constituency of public and private stakeholders.