FAQ

We’ve supported grazing in some places including on many of our properties, and supported limiting it in others.

Without a doubt, grazing impacts resources and affects recreational uses, but it also helps with resource management—some endangered species require grazing and associated stock ponds, for example. Plus, grazing provides cost-effective fire management in urban areas where other means (such as controlled burns) are impossible or more difficult. Impacts can be lessened with careful management; for example, we often fence creek areas and encourage seasonal rather than year-round grazing.

Ultimately the most overgrazed parcel is better for resources than development, and we try to maintain good relationships with ranchers from whom we buy most of our land.

Our top priority is to preserve land and wildlife corridors between parks. Secondly, we restore and enhance habitat through creek restoration, tree planting, etc. The larger an area we can preserve the more wildlife benefits.

We sometimes reintroduce rare species, as we did with the endangered peregrine falcon. We avoid trail building in some areas and remove redundant fire roads in others. We fence creek and springs. We leave dead trees in place, which benefits many species.

In development projects, we work to decrease impacts on wildlife and to require wildlife benefits such as road undercrossings, new ponds, and native revegetation.

One of the most significant things we do is to get involved in policies affecting management of parks to benefit wildlife. When a piece of ranchland becomes parkland, for example, the primary purpose of grazing shifts to resource management. Habitat is enhanced.

Despite all the development and habitat loss that has taken place in the past 50 years, Diablo’s parks have more robust wildlife populations now than they did then—primarily because of management changes.

The organization engages primarily in the following activities:

• Protects natural lands through purchases, gifts, and cooperative efforts with public and private entities.
• Educates the public regarding threats to the mountain’s flora, fauna, and rugged beauty, and to the history and heritage of the mountain, its surrounding foothills, and the Diablo Range.
• Works with landowners to preserve their property and to ensure that they receive fair value in any transaction aimed at preserving natural lands.
• Partners with Mount Diablo State Park, East Bay Regional Park District, and other public and private entities to increase and manage natural lands and to identify mitigation opportunities.
• Participates in the land use planning process for projects that could impact Mount Diablo, its surrounding foothills, and the northern Diablo Range.
• Aids in the restoration of habitat and the preservation of rare species.
• Offers technical advice to community and neighborhood groups regarding preservation of natural lands.
• Raises funds and sponsors events to build public awareness and to carry out its programs.
• Owns and manages lands prior to their transfer to a public agency, or to a private landowner subject to a conservation easement, for permanent preservation.
• Encourages recreation and public enjoyment of Mount Diablo’s parklands, consistent with the protection of their natural resources.
• Connects people to nature and inspires people to take care of nature through its community conservation, education, recreation, and restoration programs.

Our mission is to forever preserve the remaining natural lands on and around Mount Diablo, and to connect Mount Diablo to the rest of the Diablo Range.

We achieve our mission through a conservation approach that integrates perpetual land preservation, advocacy, stewardship, land use planning, and education programs. We work to preserve Mount Diablo’s peaks, surrounding foothills, and watersheds through land acquisition and preservation strategies designed to protect the mountain’s natural beauty, biological diversity, and historical and agricultural heritage; enhance our area’s quality of life; and provide recreational opportunities consistent with the protection of natural resources.

Mount Diablo is not a volcano, but it sure looks like one. If it’s not volcanic, how was the mountain formed? Geologists are still trying to unravel the complicated history of the mountain—its rocks are old, but the mountain itself is very young.

The oldest rocks are located in the central and highest peaks. As you proceed downslope, away from the summit, the rocks are younger.

The older core rocks were formed far at sea at a spreading ocean rift zone, as much as 165 million years ago. As a part of moving tectonic plates, they were brought to the North American continent and into a subduction zone.

Part of this ocean crust and overlying sediments were scraped off the subducting plate and forced under some sedimentary material already here. This area was later uplifted, pushing up the coastal range.

Meanwhile, before that happened, much of California was an inland sea, rising and falling from one ice age to the next, and into which rivers deposited the sediments. Ultimately these sedimentary layers were compressed into solid rock, typically sandstone and shale. About four million years ago, the Diablo region was low rolling hills.

About two million years ago, the same pressures that break the earth along the San Andreas fault began to form a large-scale compressional fold. The raised sedimentary layers were eroded away and tilted up, and now they wrap around the harder, older mountain core.

The tilted sedimentary layers now stand almost vertically in places such as Rock City, Castle Rock, Fossil Ridge, and Devil’s Slide. Erosion has removed thousands of feet of what was overlying material, exposing the core as we know Mount Diablo, and carving fascinating features like wind caves and tunnels.

What’s in a name? Like many other isolated peaks, Mount Diablo is steeped in lore—much of it involving the mountain’s name.

The reference to “Diablo” or devil can be traced back to 1805, when Spanish military troops searched for Native Americans who had run away from a mission. At a willow thicket near present-day Buchanan Field in Concord, the soldiers encountered a camp of Chupcan people and surrounded it. During that night, the Native Americans escaped unseen and unheard.

Angry and confused, the Spanish called the site “Monte del Diablo,” or “thicket of the devil.” Later, English-speaking newcomers mistakenly assumed the word “monte” meant “mountain” and applied the title to the prominent nearby peak. A linguistic accident thus gave California its Devil Mountain.

Although it’s commonly believed that Mount Diablo State Park covers all of Mount Diablo, in fact more than 60,000 acres of the mountain and its surrounding foothills and adjacent grasslands are privately owned. Privately owned land is potentially subject to development.

To preserve this land as public open space, Save Mount Diablo works with landowners to acquire private land and then either owns and manages it, transfers the land to a public entity such as Mount Diablo State Park or the East Bay Regional Park District, or sells the land with a conservation easement on it to a private landowner.

Save Mount Diablo is frequently asked whether we endorse recreational uses such as mountain biking, horseback riding, etc. given that they may damage trails or resources.

Although it should be noted that Save Mount Diablo is not the land manager of most of Diablo’s parklands, Save Mount Diablo holds many events and popularizes recreational activities.

We believe appropriate management and education are necessary to balance impacts with resource protection. Park general plans usually designate resource protection areas while other areas are designated for more intense recreational uses. All recreational uses have impacts on park resources, but recreational users also become park defenders and support expanded parks.

We support appropriate restrictions to protect sensitive resources such as avoidance or fencing of especially sensitive areas, careful trail design, and seasonal trail or area closures (to protect nesting eagles and falcons, for example). We also support restoration of overused areas and facilities.

Most importantly, we support expanded land preservation to balance increased population and use.