Redwood trees protected along Lake Sonoma

The San Francisco-based conservation group Save the Redwoods League has donated a 40-acre parcel of 200-year-old coast redwoods and creek bottom along Lake Sonoma to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The property was bought by the group from an unnamed local family for $145,000 earlier this year.

It is on the south side of the lake, about a tenth of a mile off the publicly owned shoreline and adjacent to the Lake Sonoma Recreation Area managed by the Army Corps.

Its transfer will allow for permanent protection of the redwoods and a stretch of Picnic Creek that runs through the parcel, according to Ruskin Hartley, the group's executive director.

The property is not served by any trails, but a public path running west from the Skaggs Springs trailhead off Stewarts Point Skaggs Springs Road does go near the property, Hartley said.

Established in 1918, the Save the Redwoods League has protected over 180,000 acres of coast redwood and giant sequoia forest in California.