Wildlife Preserves

Lesson 4: Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge Complex

The Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge Complex is located on the south central California coast, and provides habitat protection for the California condor as well as many dunes and ocean-dependent species of plants and animals.

History

Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1975 to serve as a development buffer for the Sespe Condor Sanctuary. Other federal lands in the area include some 5,000 under management by the Bureau of Land Management, for a total of over 58,000 acres within the Los Padres National Forest. The Sespe Condor Sanctuary, where California condors were re-introduced in 1992, are closed to the public except for two travel corridors allowing access by foot or horseback.

The most recent addition to the Hopper Mountain Wildlife Refuge Complex is the Guadalupe-Nipomo (gwad-eh-'loo-pay nih-'poe-mah) Dunes National Wildlife Refuge near Oceano, California. This portion of the complex is open to public use, and was the result of a complicated series of land transfers involving the Nature Conservancy of California, the Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County, the California State Department of Parks and Recreation, and a number of private parties. The Refuge opened in 2000 with the goal of protecting a unique ecosystem of sand dunes, freshwater lakes, and ocean beach that is home to a number of rare and endangered species.

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