MENDOCINO CO., 11/4/26 — The creek called Dutch Charlie on federal maps has another name, Shaahnaa’ Lhook’. It means “creek with salmon.” The state now plans to help return the bottom of that creek to the Cahto Tribe.
The State Coastal Conservancy filed a notice with the state Oct. 23 for what it calls the Shaahnaa’ Lhook’ Acquisition, 672 acres at 39850 Wilderness Lodge Road in Branscomb. The property sits where the creek runs into the South Fork Eel River.
The Conservancy board approved a grant for the deal April 23. Under it, Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit, would buy the land. It would then turn the land over to the Cahto Tribe of Laytonville Rancheria, according to the Conservancy’s staff report. The tribe would manage it “in perpetuity as a Cahto Tribal Protected Area,” the report says.
The report doesn’t say why Trust for Public Land, rather than the state or the tribe, would buy the land first. It says the group has “an extensive track record” of conservation deals, “including tribal land return.”
The board voted 6-0 for a grant of up to $1.5 million, with board member Joy Sterling absent for the vote, according to the meeting minutes. The staff report lists a second source, $765,000 from a state Department of Fish and Wildlife spill-response fund, for a project total of $2,265,000. The Conservancy’s share comes from Proposition 4, the state’s 2024 climate bond.
The Conservancy’s records don’t give a sale price. Under the grant’s terms, Trust for Public Land can pay no more than fair market value. An appraisal sets that value, and the Conservancy’s executive officer must approve it. The Conservancy’s records also don’t name the seller. A 2024 copy of the county assessor’s roll lists Wildlands LLC as the owner of all four parcels. On that roll, the four add up to 672 acres.
The property holds 1.25 miles of the creek, plus 0.2 miles of South Fork Eel frontage and a border on Thompson Creek, a cold-water tributary. State Fish and Wildlife surveys going back to 1938 have found the creek “a highly productive steelhead stream,” the report says. More recent surveys found some of the highest numbers of coho salmon seen in the South Fork Eel basin. The coho there are listed as threatened under both state and federal law.
The staff report also describes power and phone to the site and “multiple unpermitted structures.”
Higher in the same watershed, logging has been in court. Cal Fire’s notices for two timber harvest plans, called Hot Tuna and Lincoln Logs, list Dutch Charlie Creek among their watersheds. The plans cover 926 acres owned by Redwood Timber Company LLC. On Sept. 2, Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Charlotte Scott granted a preliminary injunction and a stay against both plans, with conditions. An injunction of that kind is meant to keep things as they are until a final ruling. The Conservancy’s April report says permanent protection keeps the creek’s streams and forests “resilient against logging and subdivision pressures.”
The report lays out two phases. First, Trust for Public Land checks out the property: title work, appraisals and environmental reviews. Then come escrow and the transfer to the tribe. The report says the tribe will write a management plan once Trust for Public Land owns the land. It could include checking water quality, controlling erosion and keeping the forest’s tree cover in place.
The tribe has passed a resolution on the land, according to the report. In it, the tribe commits to “prohibit commercial extractive uses.” The tribe’s current rancheria, its land just west of Laytonville, is 202 acres.
The report calls tribal access here a “long-unmet need.” It says tribes’ ties to the land in this region were “severely disrupted by genocide, forced removal, and dispossession.”
In 1986, the report says, Trust for Public Land and the Conservancy set up the Sinkyone Wilderness. That deal put 3,900 acres in the hands of the Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council.