For 22 years, Los Padres ForestWatch has worked to protect wild places across the Los Padres National Forest, Carrizo Plain National Monument, and California’s Central Coast.
These are places where mountains meet the sea, rivers still run wild, condors soar overhead, wildflowers blanket the hillsides, and miles of backcountry stretch beyond the horizon. They provide clean water, wildlife habitat, opportunities for recreation, and a connection to nature that is increasingly rare.
Some are iconic destinations. Others are remote corners of our public lands that many people may never visit. Together, they form an extraordinary network of wilderness, watersheds, forests, grasslands, and wildlife habitat stretching from Big Sur to the Carrizo Plain.
In honor of ForestWatch’s 22nd birthday, we’re celebrating 22 of these remarkable wild places.
1. Big Sur Coast
Along the Big Sur Coast, the Santa Lucia Mountains meet the Pacific at the southern edge of the coast redwood’s natural range. These cool, foggy canyons shelter some of Los Padres’ most unusual ecosystems, including rare southern redwood groves and habitat for California condors.
2. Ventana Wilderness
The Ventana Wilderness protects deep canyons containing some of the remaining old-growth coast redwood forests in Los Padres. Endangered California condors have even been documented nesting inside cavities in these massive trees, making this wilderness an extraordinary meeting place of two iconic California species.
3. Silver Peak Wilderness
The Silver Peak Wilderness sits near the southernmost natural stands of coast redwoods on Earth and also supports unusual plant communities found along the rugged Big Sur coast. Nearby redwood groves and stands of Sargent cypress make this one of the most botanically distinctive corners of Los Padres.
4. Santa Lucia Wilderness
Streams tumbling through the Santa Lucia Wilderness create cool, wet refuges for wildlife such as the California newt, a state Species of Special Concern that depends on healthy ponds and flowing streams to reproduce. The wilderness is also home to Big Falls in the Arroyo Grande Creek watershed.
5. Tecuya Ridge
In the San Emigdio Mountains north of Mount Pinos, Tecuya Ridge supports mixed-conifer forests and important habitat for endangered California condors. ForestWatch has challenged commercial logging in the Antimony Inventoried Roadless Area, advocated for stronger protections, and—with donor support—purchased two adjoining properties in 2024 and 2025, permanently protecting 157 acres atop the ridge.
6. Figueroa Mountain
The landscape around Figueroa Mountain supports the rare Santa Barbara jewelflower, a diminutive native plant that grows on specialized serpentine soils. The mountain also holds deep cultural significance for Chumash communities and has been the focus of ForestWatch efforts to protect old-growth trees, wetlands, springs, and oak woodlands.
7. San Rafael Wilderness
The San Rafael Wilderness holds a special place in conservation history: its protection in 1968 became a precedent-setting victory showing that locally developed wilderness proposals deserved a voice alongside federal agency plans. Today its rugged backcountry includes the Sisquoc Condor Sanctuary and some of the most remote habitat in Los Padres.
8. Sisquoc River
The Sisquoc River was once home to one of Santa Barbara County’s largest runs of southern steelhead, with historic spawning grounds extending deep into the San Rafael Wilderness. Today southern steelhead are among the nation’s most endangered fish, and ForestWatch has spent years fighting to restore the river flows they need to complete their migration.
9. Dick Smith Wilderness
The Dick Smith Wilderness is a landscape of sandstone outcrops, deep river gorges, waterfalls, pools, and remarkably diverse wildlife habitat. Areas surrounding the wilderness are still recovering from the 2007 Zaca Fire, offering a rare opportunity to watch wild ecosystems regenerate over decades.
10. Pine Mountain
Pine Mountain is a botanical crossroads where chaparral gives way to pinyon-juniper woodland and mixed-conifer forest, supporting more than 400 native plant species. Its old-growth forests and ancient chaparral have also been at the center of ForestWatch’s years-long campaign against a controversial logging and vegetation-clearing project.
11. Piedra Blanca
Piedra Blanca’s massive white sandstone formations mark one of the most recognizable gateways into the Sespe Wilderness. It is also a place where ForestWatch has worked to connect families with the outdoors and mobilized volunteers to remove trash and protect the heavily visited Sespe Creek corridor.
12. Sespe Wilderness
The Sespe Wilderness is the largest protected backcountry in the southern Los Padres and provides habitat for rare wildlife including California condors and bighorn sheep. It is also a landscape of deep cultural and spiritual importance to Chumash people and exists today because generations of community members fought for its permanent protection.
13. Piru Creek
Piru Creek is one of Los Padres’ remarkable wild river corridors, supporting native fish including the threatened Santa Ana sucker and critical habitat for endangered southern steelhead. Its Wild & Scenic River corridor also exposes layers of fossil-bearing rock millions of years old, giving the creek exceptional ecological and geological value.
14. Matilija Wilderness
The Matilija Wilderness protects the rugged mountains and canyons above Ojai, including Matilija Falls, swimming holes, and striking geologic formations reached by a route the public has traveled for generations. The wilderness is also one of the places where the iconic Matilija poppy, whose flower is the largest of any native California plant, grows in the wild.
15. Matilija Creek
Matilija Creek is part of an increasingly rare network of high-quality streams in Southern California and provides riparian habitat for species including the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher. ForestWatch has long advocated for stronger protections for Matilija Creek and other free-flowing waterways of Los Padres.
16. Chumash Wilderness
Surrounding the high country near Mount Pinos, the Chumash Wilderness protects pinyon woodland, Great Basin sage, conifer forest, and landscapes deeply significant in Chumash history and culture. These wildlands remain vulnerable to impacts such as illegal off-road vehicle use, which can damage fragile habitat and cause erosion.
17. Mount Pinos
Mount Pinos contains some of the rarest high-elevation habitat in Los Padres, including the westernmost limber pine populations in the world and sensitive wildflowers such as Mount Pinos larkspur. The mountain is also profoundly important to Chumash culture and is traditionally understood as a place central to maintaining the world’s equilibrium.
18. Santa Ynez River
The Santa Ynez River provides an essential ribbon of riparian habitat through an otherwise dry landscape, supporting cottonwoods, willows, and wildlife including the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher. ForestWatch volunteers have also spent years removing invasive tamarisk along the river to help restore native habitat.
19. Lizard’s Mouth
Lizard’s Mouth is beloved for its maze of sandstone formations and sweeping views from the Santa Ynez Mountains, but its accessibility also brings heavy use. ForestWatch volunteers have repeatedly returned here to remove hundreds of pounds of trash, broken glass, and graffiti, helping care for one of the forest’s most popular gathering places.
20. Carrizo Plain National Monument
Carrizo Plain protects one of California’s last great native grasslands and one of the state’s richest concentrations of rare and endangered wildlife. Its giant kangaroo rat is a keystone species, supporting an ecosystem that also includes San Joaquin kit foxes, blunt-nosed leopard lizards, pronghorn, burrowing owls, and California condors.
21. Temblor Range
The Temblor Range rises along the eastern edge of Carrizo Plain beside one of the clearest visible stretches of the San Andreas Fault, where tectonic movement has literally redirected streams across the landscape. After wet winters, its normally stark hillsides can erupt in spectacular displays of native wildflowers.
22. Caliente Range
The Caliente Range forms the rugged western wall of Carrizo Plain, rising to Caliente Mountain, the highest point in San Luis Obispo County. Its washes also support habitat for the federally threatened Kern primrose sphinx moth, while the range itself has faced pressure from oil development that ForestWatch has worked to keep out of the monument.
22 Years of Protecting Wild Places
From fog-shrouded mountains along the Big Sur Coast to high-elevation forests, free-flowing creeks, rugged wilderness, and the vast grasslands of Carrizo Plain National Monument, these 22 places represent just a fraction of the extraordinary public lands of California’s Central Coast.
They may look different, but they are deeply connected. These landscapes provide clean water, refuge for wildlife, places to hike and explore, and room for wildness to endure. They are also part of a larger network of public lands facing ongoing pressures from development, extractive uses, habitat loss, climate change, and efforts to weaken longstanding conservation protections.
For 22 years, Los Padres ForestWatch has worked alongside communities throughout the Central Coast to protect these places and ensure that decisions about their future are guided by science, stewardship, and the people who love them.
Twenty-two places. Twenty-two years. And a future worth protecting.
If these wild places matter to you, please make a donation today. Your support helps ForestWatch defend public lands, protect wildlife and clean water, and ensure that wildness continues to endure across California’s Central Coast.
Here’s to the next 22.