Wind Wolves — Landseed

Map key

Wind Wolves Preserve

Los Padres NF & Bitter Creek NWR

Iconic wildlifetap a species ↗

Tule elk

San Joaquin kit fox

Blunt-nosed leopard lizard

Tricolored blackbird

Mountain lion

American badger

Golden eagle

California condor

SR-166 & regional routes

Preserve HQ

Altitude bands · 640–6,005 ft in the preserve

Surrounding high country7,500 ft +

Beyond the preserve6,005–7,500

Ponderosa & Douglas-fir4,600–6,005

Pinyon-juniper woodland3,100–4,600

Chaparral & oak1,800–3,100

Oak savanna850–1,800

Valley grassland640–850

Pinyon and juniper are conifers too — the difference above 4,600 ft is stature, not class: open, low pinyon–juniper woodland gives way to taller stands of ponderosa pine and bigcone Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga macrocarpa, called big cone spruce locally). Bands are an elevation key, not a vegetation survey.

Wildlife · population

Wind Wolves Preserve

A 377 km² (93,000 ac) block of grassland, oak savanna and chaparral climbing from the San Joaquin Valley floor into the San Emigdio Mountains. Its boundary runs some 190 km as digitised — about 2.7 times the 70 km a circle of equal area would need, reflecting an elongated, canyon-following shape rather than a compact block.

Area

377.05 km² WDPA

Acreage

93,000 ac ~93,065 ac WDPA

Boundary

~190 km as digitised

Compactness

0.13 Polsby–Popper

Established

1996

Elevation

640 – 6,005 ft

Largest nonprofit preserve on the West Coast — 93,000 acres under The Wildlands Conservancy

2021 easement — 14,631 more acres permanently protected with the Trust for Public Land and California Rangeland Trust

1998 tule elk reintroduction — 19 released, 445+ counted by 2022

Tehachapi connectivity corridor — named the last open wildland link between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges (South Coast Wildlands, 2003)

Area: UNEP-WCMC, Protected Planet, WDPA ID 11116227. Boundary drawn from OpenStreetMap rel. 4430291. Note: unlike some park boundaries digitised in OSM, this ring closely matches the WDPA figure — measured here at 384.49 km², +2.0% over WDPA's 377.05 km², well within normal digitisation tolerance. Perimeter and compactness are computed from the OSM ring at native vertex density and are therefore scale-dependent.