Tri-Valley Conservancy now holds permanent conservation easements on 331 acres straddling Doolan Canyon and the Springtown Preserve, locking in a deal years in the making to offset the habitat lost to one of Dublin's most contested housing projects. The newly protected land links into a wildlife corridor of nearly 1,500 contiguous acres between Dublin and Livermore, shielding species including the California tiger salamander, the California red-legged frog, the western burrowing owl and the vernal pool fairy shrimp.
The purchase closed Tuesday, according to city officials cited by the Livermore Vine, which reported that 131 acres sit in Doolan Canyon north of the Dublin-Livermore junction while 200 acres cover the Springtown Preserve in North Livermore. The easements were required to mitigate habitat loss from Trumark Homes' East Ranch project, a 573-unit residential development spanning about 165 acres in East Dublin. Livermore's City Council approved Trumark's request to purchase the easements for roughly $4 million back in September 2022, and the agreements spell out timing for easement preparation, management plans, and long-term funding through an endowment, the outlet reported.
Tri-Valley Conservancy Executive Director Rebecca Spector said the organization is “proud to add these open space lands to its more than 6,500 areas of protected lands in the Tri-Valley region,” per the same Livermore Vine report. The Springtown easement protects unique alkali wetlands along with the rare plants and animals that live there, while the Doolan Canyon parcel consists mostly of grazed, undeveloped grassland that abuts another 1,346 acres already under a Tri-Valley Conservancy easement.
A Housing Fight That Reshaped Dublin Politics
The East Ranch project, now marketed as Francis Ranch, has a bruising political backstory that set the stage for this mitigation deal. Dublin's City Council first approved the development in December 2021, only to repeal it after residents gathered 5,200 signatures on a referendum petition, according to The Real Deal. The council was then forced to re-approve it in May 2022 under California's Housing Accountability Act, a state law that limits local governments' ability to reject residential projects that comply with their own general plans. The original 2021 approval also required Trumark to set aside a two-acre parcel for a future 77-unit affordable housing project serving developmentally disabled residents, plus 50 deed-restricted accessory dwelling units, as CBS News reported at the time.
Francis Ranch's financing structure diverges from other Dublin developments: the Dublin City Council voted 3-2 in 2023 to create a Mello-Roos tax district for the project, setting special taxes on homeowners as a percentage of property sale prices to fund community infrastructure.
Decades of Voter Resistance to Development
Doolan Canyon's protection didn't happen in a vacuum. Dublin voters rejected a developer-backed ballot measure in November 2014 by a lopsided 83.8% to 16.2% margin, according to Ballotpedia, which would have annexed and developed 1,650 acres in the canyon. Conservation groups including Tri-Valley Conservancy and Save Mount Diablo opposed that measure to preserve the greenbelt buffer between Dublin and Livermore. More recently, the City of Livermore ran a citywide poll in late 2023 that showed overwhelming resident support for open-space preservation in Doolan Canyon, after Dublin petitioned Alameda County's LAFCo over sphere-of-influence changes near the Crosby Properties.
The newly protected Doolan Canyon parcel includes a roughly 0.3-acre pond and swale surrounded by new plantings, part of what Tri-Valley Conservancy officials describe as a corridor connection especially important for the California tiger salamander and California red-legged frog, allowing wildlife to move between food, water and shelter.
Public Access Still Years Away
Just north of the easement, the East Bay Regional Park District owns an adjacent 4.5-acre parcel known as the Olsen property, purchased in June 2026, which could eventually serve as a staging area and the first segment of a public trail into Doolan Canyon Regional Preserve. The district offered its first guided tour into the preserve on October 3, 2026, and continues to study the area's resources for potential public access, though trails remain closed to unguided visitors for now.
That caution reflects a broader pattern. The park district has assembled roughly 805 acres of protected preserve land through incremental purchases, including a 160-acre expansion bought for $1.27 million in 2019, according to a East Bay Regional Park District planning document. The district launched a formal Land Use Plan study in 2026 to weigh natural hazards and habitat sensitivity before deciding how much of the preserve can safely open to hikers, balancing recreation demands against conservation easement restrictions written to protect listed species.
A Land Trust With Deeper Roots
Tri-Valley Conservancy traces its origins to 1994, when it was founded as the South Livermore Valley Agricultural Land Trust to carry out the 1993 South Livermore Valley Area Plan, according to the Tri-Valley Conservancy. It expanded its geographic reach in 2003 to cover Livermore, Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon and Sunol, with an original target of protecting 5,000 acres of agricultural lands and vineyards. The group's mission now stretches beyond habitat easements into agricultural support: it launched a low-interest Sponsored Replanting Program in May 2026 to help vineyard owners replace aging vines, after roughly 300 acres of grapevines were pulled from the Livermore Valley over the prior two years, Edible East Bay reported.
The Springtown Preserve's alkali wetlands support rare plants and animals.
