Carmel Valley’s Rana Creek Ranch, long owned by a former Apple CEO, will become a nature preserve.

The sprawling Rana Creek Ranch in Carmel Valley is being sold to The Wildlands Conservancy for $35 million, with the environmental group planning to turn the 14,000-acre property into a nature preserve.

Former Apple chairman and CEO Mike Markkula, who acquired the working cattle ranch in the 1980s, has listed the property several times over the past decade – at one point asking $60 million and subsequently relisting it at lower prices, most recently for $37.5 million in 2020.

But Markkula has now agreed to sell Rana Creek Ranch, considered the largest landholding in Carmel Valley, to the San Bernardino-based Wildlands Conservancy, which operates two dozen nature preserves spanning more than 200,000 acres across California and Oregon. The deal is set to close by the end of July.

The transaction is funded with significant contributions from the state government, including $24 million from California’s Wildlife Conservation Board and $2 million from the California Coastal Conservancy. The Wildlands Conservancy is contributing $2.5 million, while the remaining $6.5 million comes in the form of a loan provided by Markkula, according to Wildlands Conservancy Executive Director Frazier Haney.

The Wildlands Conservancy will open the ranch to the public free of charge, which Haney says could take three to five years to plan and organize in terms of staffing and infrastructure. The deal prevents what could have been an expansive residential redevelopment of the property under another owner given the site’s zoning.

“It could have been subdivided into at least 60 separate parcels [that] could have been built for residential purposes,” Haney says.

The acquisition includes a 9,000-square-foot conference center, built by Markkula, that will likely anchor The Wildlands Conservancy’s designs for a new “land stewardship institute” on the site, as well as outdoor education programs for children, Haney says. “The purpose is to call people back to land stewardship and a relationship with the land,” he notes. “All of our preserves are open to the public for free because we believe access to nature is a birthright.”

The ranch also comes with an estate home, two guest homes and other buildings that will be used for staff housing and potentially rented out for events, “as long as they don’t impact the resource,” according to Haney. It also includes a 2,900-foot paved airstrip and helipad, also built by Markkula. “We don’t have any jets, but what we’ve heard from the local community is that [the airstrip is] something they’d like to see maintained for fire protection purposes,” he says.

The Wildlands Conservancy is working closely with the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County, whose native lands include Rana Creek Ranch. The conservation group intends to permanently provide the tribe with some 1,800 acres of the property, either through a sale or donation “or a combination of both,” Haney says – adding that the two groups will work together in stewarding the land.

“The tribe’s knowledge of the land is immeasurable,” he says. “Their deep perspective is going to help inform our management.”