The biological diversity of Tejon Ranch is unparalleled in Southern California. 

 

Underpinning this biodiversity is the Ranch’s geography at the nexus of several distinct ecoregions, including the Great Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, Mojave Desert and Southwestern California. At the core of the Ranch is the Tehachapi Range, an amalgamation of these ecoregions and one of the fastest uplifting ranges in the world. 

 

At 270,000 acres, the Ranch is 0.25% of California’s land area and the largest contiguous private property in the state. Elevation ranges from a few hundred feet to slightly over 6,800 feet above sea level. The Ranch is home to more than 1,000 native California plant species (14% of the state’s botanical diversity), hundreds of mammals, birds, reptiles, and countless thousands of invertebrate species. 

 

Included are plants and animals endemic to Tejon (i.e., found exclusively on Tejon) and others that are rare, threatened and/or recognized as endangered at both the state and federal levels.

 

Tejon is an immense open space where animals with large range requirements can thrive because seasonal migration corridors remain open and unrestricted. Plants’ genetic boundaries between closely related taxa – with only subtle morphological differences – are preserved. 

 

Globally, as habitat and populations of plants and animals become increasingly at risk and fragmented, the importance of large intact landscapes, such as Tejon, for preserving biodiversity cannot be overstated. 

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Tejon Ranch is an extremely critical piece of a larger, continent-wide conservation effort to create important and unobstructed corridors for wildlife. Significant public and private conservation investments have been made to create these vital corridors because needed habitat is increasingly threatened by land use and climate change.