With respect for California’s natural beauty, David Myers has saved him hundreds of thousands of acres from development, including the purchase of the largest land for the state’s preservation, including a patchwork of 400,000 acres in San Bernardino County.
Myers, a former executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy and recent president, passed away from natural causes at his home in Oak Glen Reserve in the San Bernardino County Mountains. In recent years, Myers has been battling several health issues, including Parkinson’s disease, Haney said.
The Oak Glen, California-based nonprofit co-founded with financial operator David Gelbaum, who retired in 1995, and has built a reputation as one of the nation’s most effective parents, with a unique vision that combines land management with outdoor education for young people.
Myers also led the battle to create 154,000 acres of sand into snow, stretching from the Sonoran Desert floor of the San Bernardino National Forest, about 90 minutes east of Los Angeles, 154,000 acres of sand that stretches to more than 10,000 feet.
“David Myers was an inspiration and a tireless crusade for wild places,” said Peter Galvin, founder of the Center for Biodiversity. “Anyone interested in the health of the majestic landscape from the Mojave Desert in Southern California to the Eel River in Northern California remains in his debt.”
“David also worked harder than anyone I know in the conservation movement,” he said, “introducing low-income children and their families into natural territory beyond their neighborhood.”
Originally from California, Myers led his first conservation battle in the 1970s when he was a student in philosophy and literature at Fullerton California State. He was galvanized by the proposal to bulldoze Sicamole’s comprehensive pipe canyon west of the Yucca Valley for the international airport.
“When I started to see the bulldozer leaning over the oak tree, I couldn’t believe it,” Myers recalls in a 2000 interview with the Press EntelPrice in Riverside. “And my thoughts at the time were, ‘What would people think about destroying their churches?’ Because they were destroying mine. ”
Myers responded by helping to organize a group called Hills for Everyone, which in 1977 earned state approval to place 2,200 acres in the California State Parks System. Chino Hills State Park is now a 12,000-acre reserve ranging from the Santa Ana Mountains to the Whittier Hills.
Growing up in Chino Hills, Myers nurtured a love of nature as a boy during a summer camping trip to Mammoth Lake in the eastern Sierra. He was also influenced by the writings of John Muir, the legendary protectionist who founded the Sierra Club.
It was the sudden realization that California’s natural beauty could be destroyed very easily what prompted him to follow the path of Muir.
“One winter he overlooked Chino Hill and about 10,000 Canadian geese wetlands. The following year, said Dan York, best friend and associate director at Wildlands Conservancy. He realized that it could all disappear for generations.”
After graduating from college, Myers made furniture for his living, but according to York, “there was always very sharp in real estate and land.”
In 1994 he decided to sell 640 acres of desert land he owned near Yucca Valley and apply most of his proceeds to conservation projects. He placed newspaper ads for “conservation-oriented donors” who would buy the land but not develop it. Gelbaum, a mathematician who managed the hedge fund, became his financial angel.
Together they began strategically purchasing land to link San Bernardino, San Jacinto and Bighorn Mountain with Joshua Tree National Park. These purchases totaled 70 square miles.
The next major purchase of the Conservancy was once a 97,000-acre ranch in the hills of San Emigdio Mountains, northwest of Gorman. Renamed Wind Wolves, it is now the largest privately owned nature reserve on the West Coast, where endangered kit foxes and leopard lizards thriving along with elk, Blacktailedia, Greathorn owls and bobcats. It is also home to paintings of marine fossils and chumash, one of the most striking examples of Native American rock art.
Myers’ vision for the area has wiped out artificial invasions such as reintroducing animals, rock quarries, oil waste, fences and roads that were once native inhabitants such as Tauru Elk and Bighorn sheep. He said the process allows for an increasingly rare experience of seeing visitors appear “too wild.” He called it “re-wild.”
The best result of the Conservancy was to earn about 1,000 square miles (approximately 580,000 acres) of desert land that stretches from Burstow to needle, owned by Caterrace Development Co., the Santa Pacific Railway’s real estate division. Myers led the complex negotiations to finalize the largest section of the 2000 contract at a cost of $15 million from a $30 million conservancy fund and federal sources.
With this acquisition, the land protected the land from the hands of the developers by planning to carve spectacular rocky areas, lava flows, dunes, valleys and cactus gardens into a 40-acre ranch. Myers and his team have greatly expanded the wildlands of Joshua Tree National Park, Moherb National Reserve and the Bureau of Land Management, reconnecting large corridors of wildlife.
“David was a man of courage, ambition and infectious boy’s enthusiasm,” Haney said. “He left us with many big dreams and the tools we needed to make them come true.”
Myers came up with the conservancy motto, “Behold, beauty,” which Haney said captured the spirit of his longtime friend and leader.
“David’s vision of conservation was not only based on science, but also on the ways in which the beauty of nature could improve human life… (and) is a symbol of environmental health,” Haney said. He called him boldly in the best way.
“I’d never know anyone else like David,” he said. “I miss the power he had to bending reality.”
The reserve currently owns approximately 208,000 acres across California, Oregon and Utah. This is the majority of California, and we see more than 1.4 million people every year. The group also offers free outdoor education on the land, reaching over 25,000 low-income students and families per year. Wind Wolves’ programs, Los Rios Rancho in Oak Glen, and Grace Valley Ranch in the San Bernardino National Forest, provide many children with their first experience at the natural wonders of the state.
In Los Rios, students hike on natural trails designed by Myers, etched with quotes from Emerson, Thoreau and Muir. He linked conservation with the development of a new generation of thinkers and naturalists, and viewed outdoor education as an important strategy.
“We make these kids who have grown their eyes look like they’re saying, ‘Oh, amazing!’,” Myers told The Times in 2003.
Myers is survived by his wife, two brothers, two sisters, many Nie and Ne.
Times Staff WriterS Grace Toohey Louis Sahagun contributes to this Report. Woo is a former Times staff writer..
