Limestone Canyon near East Orange is admired as one of California's most beautiful natural resources.

Since its founding more than a century ago, The Irvine Company has made the conservation of land a cornerstone of its master planning. The result is a legacy of open space and recreation that further enriches the active outdoor experience central to the quality of life on the ranch, yielding benefits for both nature and residents for generations to come.

In recent years, in an increasingly urban context, there have been significant additions to the permanent open space assets of The Irvine Ranch®. This has been inspired by a broader planning effort by The Irvine Company, community organizations, and municipalities to dramatically increase protected open space on the entire Ranch. Perhaps most significant to Orange residents was the gift in 2001 of more than 11,000 acres of environmentally sensitive land on The Irvine Ranch^® – most of which is within or borders the Orange sphere of influence. These protected lands are under the stewardship of the Irvine Ranch Conservancy. Indeed, more than 20,000 acres of land are now designated as parkland or permanent open space in the Orange sphere of influence alone.

The addition of the 11,000 acres of permanently protected open space near the East Orange planning area eliminated concerns about the ability of wildlife to move throughout the central part of the Orange County Nature Reserve. It also revealed a plan for East Orange that was dramatically scaled back from what had been approved in the city's 1989 master plan for the area.

We now plan to build no more than 4,000 homes, less than 10 percent of the city's housing stock, on 2,000 acres in East Orange. This plan reflects a thoughtful balance of land uses than protects natural resources while helping to meet the need for more housing opportunities in the city of Orange.

To further protect natural resources, The Irvine Company has made a number of adjustments in the original plans for East Orange based on extensive community input. For example, these changes include:

• Relocating a proposed golf course from Limestone Creek to an area near Irvine Lake that had previously been used as a sand/gravel operation. This preserves Limestone's oak woodland habitat and natural creek system.

• Modifying plans in Area 2 of the project to avoid three arroyos containing oak woodland habitat and to avoid picturesque red rock bluffs that provide important habitat for several bat species.

• Changing boundaries in Planning Area 3 to avoid least Bell's vireo habitat in Limestone Creek.

• Working with the County of Orange to preserve the Haul Road bridge over Santiago Canyon Road that is home to hundreds of bats.

• Removing planned development from a wildlife corridor west of Irvine Lake to create a 1,900-foot separation between Planning Areas 1 and 2.

• Reducing the number of homes by more than 8,000.

Irvine Regional Park was the first in a series of conservation initiatives.

This vast and beautiful part of The Irvine Ranch® long has spoken to those who love the outdoors and who are responsible for its stewardship. In 1897, James Irvine II made a gift to the County of Orange of 160 acres for what would become Irvine Regional Park. That gift was the beginning of a planning philosophy, a way of looking at and listening to the land that responds to its beauty, its environmental richness and its recreational possibilities.

Today, Irvine Regional Park comprises 477 acres and is home to the Harding Nature Area, the J.E. Pleasants Tree, the Orange County Historical Commission Oak Grove and the popular Irvine Park Railroad. On the back porch of Orange, it is a place where picnickers, hikers, cyclists and equestrians meet nature.

Irvine Regional Park was the first in an extraordinary series of conservation initiatives by the company, community organizations, and municipalities that has led to more than half of the 93,000-acre Irvine Ranch being protected forever as open space and for recreational uses.