The UCSC Natural Reserve

The UCSC Campus Natural Reserve

Founding UCSC Chancellor Dean McHenry “guarded the redwoods and other trees that lay in the builder’s path and saw that buildings and roads were sited to save the tress. Legend has it that decreed no tree over ten inches in diameter was to be felled without his permission.” A story recounted in the The Natural History of the UC Santa Cruz Campus perhaps symbolizes the unusual respect (at least in its early years) for the natural world found on campus. Dean McHenry reportedly discovered an uprooted redwood stump and ordered it be replaced with its surrounding plants. He then ordered “that all stumps in the future be removed only with his approval. The next day he found the stump back in place, with a plaque affixed to it that read, ‘Chancellor’s stump: Do not molest.’”

Other members of the visionary faculty that came to UCSC in its first decade embraced this spirit of preserving the natural environment on campus. While teaching at UCLA in the 1960s, Professor Ken Norris envisioned a university-owned natural land system to support the work of faculty, students and researchers. From this vision and years of personal work and dedication by Norris and his colleagues, the UC-wide Natural Reserve System (NRS) was formed in 1965. Today the NRS system includes 33 reserves totaling over 120,000 acres, making it the largest and most diverse system of its kind.

While teaching at UCSC in the 1970s and 80s, Norris and his students surveyed the entire 4000 acres of the campus and detailed its natural communities. The idea of an on-campus reserve at UCSC was not a new one. In 1963, prior to the opening of the UCSC campus, Professor Stanley Cain proposed a teaching reserve containing all the important vegetation types associated with the region. Recommendations for the establishment of a reserve system on-campus continued every several years until the Campus Natural Reserve was formally established by the 1988 LRDP.

Norris and his students dedicated years of research, surveying and classifying the natural resources in order to provide UCSC with an on-campus collection of, in Norris' own words, "outdoor laboratories" or "classrooms without walls" that would add to the uniqueness of the UCSC campus.

Director: Maggie Fusari fusari@ucsc.edu Steward: Sean McStay mcstay@ucsc.edu