For 25 years, Larry De Young has lived and raised horses in the coastal town of Montara in San Mateo County.
“When we moved in, we thought this was a great place because it was open space,’’ said De Young, a retired biologist.
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WATCH HEREAs the years went on, however, that space across a dirt road from his home became dense with non-native trees, including highly flammable eucalyptus. The area near his home is part of a 100-acre stretch of land Caltrans bought back in the 1970s, to serve as a freeway bypass around the unstable Devil’s Slide area.
In September 2023, De Young got a cancellation letter from his insurance carrier, citing high fire risk as justification. He said what’s so frustrating is, that as he has cleared the land around his home, Caltrans has not been doing its part.
“They just let all this happen,” he said. Concerned that the densely wooded land imperils the entire 2,400 home community, De Young and his neighbors formed a group to push Caltrans to honor what they consider to be its legal obligation to clear the overgrowth.
“I want them to make this fire safe – I want them to mitigate the fire hazard," De Young said.
“If I had a residence here, I would want to have clearance around my structure,” said Rich Sampson, Cal Fire division chief for San Mateo County.
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Sampson says his agency understands the threat and has dispatched crews to periodically thin trees around dozens of threatened homes in the area over the years. But, he says, the vegetation has grown back more vigorously than ever.
Sampson, a forester, says removing non-native trees is the only long-term fix. But many of those trees are so mature they’re protected under current state coastal commission rules. Also, he says, the area is now considered habitat to endangered California red-legged frogs and San Francisco garter snakes. Both are protected under state and federal regulations, he says, and cutting trees would be disruptive.
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SIGN UP “We'd be destroying their habitat,” he said, because moving into the area to remove trees altogether, “we'd be crushing them or stepping on them.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently issued an order designed to exempt projects like this one from Coastal Commission rules. While Caltrans says it’s studying if the area qualifies for an exemption, the agency has cautioned Montara residents that any work would still be subject to state and federal restrictions designed to protect endangered wildlife.
Caltrans said in a statement that it “recognizes residents’ concerns about potential fire hazards heightened by recent events such as the Southern California wildfires, and the need to manage vegetation fuel loads within the Devil’s Slide bypass property.”
The agency says it’s working “as quickly as possible” on a potential exemption.
“Depending on the findings of the environmental analysis,’’ the agency added, “other local, state, or federal regulations may apply, and in that case, we will work on measures to protect environmental resources while carrying out fire mitigation work.”
The issue of protecting endangered species frustrates De Young, given what he sees as the much greater risk that the entire hillside community of Montara could be destroyed if hit by a fire like the one that tore through Pacific Palisades earlier this year.
“If this burns up, there will be no frogs – there will be no houses, there will be no trees,” he said.
Recently, Sampson says, Cal Fire issued violation notices to Caltrans for failing to maintain the legally required 100-foot buffer zone around five homes the transportation agency itself owns on the land. Caltrans has been too slow in dealing with the worsening fire threat looming over the entire community, De Young says.
“I want this fixed,” he said, looking out around his expansive horse property that’s just across a dirt road from the Caltrans land. “I mean, I love where I live … there’s over 100 people that are in our group that love where they live. So, it’s scary.”
