BYRON DE ARAKAL -- Between The Lines

Most kids of sound-thinking age begin to tread on post-Santa ground

the moment their eyes take on a suspicious glint as they encounter one of

those shopping center St. Nicks. This paves the way for great physical

comedy. Parents know what I mean here. There sits the darling little

cherub atop Santa’s lap giving a firm tug to his whiskers. And, then,

wondering aloud why his beard is attached to his head with rubber bands.

I always thought that the mall Santa smelling of scotch was a better

clue. But no matter.

Now I sort of readied myself for a similar scene -- metaphorically of

course -- when Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren broke the news late last

month that he’d be taking 11,000 acres of pristine native ranchland off

the development table for good. So you know, the 17-square-mile gift --

when lumped in with the other chunks of wilderness Bren has committed

over the years to leave untouched -- means more than half of the ranch’s

93,000-acre sprawl will remain as it has for centuries. It’s a vast

amount of prime habitat -- including the prized Fremont Canyon -- that

won’t be overrun by any of those humdrum concrete tilt-ups or

insufferable pink houses that marked the Irvine Co.’s Pepto-Bismol period

in the 1980s.

Knowing that Bren is generally viewed as the big kahuna of the

county’s land barons and developers, I cocked my ear in anticipation of

the good earth crowd’s vocal skepticism of the gift. After all, over the

course of his nearly 25-year controlling interest of the Irvine Ranch’s

vast land resources, Bren has had trouble making magnanimous conservation

gestures without the environmentalist kooks yanking on his beard to see

if he and his motives were the genuine article.

And what happened? During Bren’s speech announcing the alms, Shirley

Grindle -- the county’s hardened warhorse against all things big and

bureaucratic and baldly capitalist -- broke down in tears. “Since 1957,”

she told the Los Angeles Times, “I’ve been driving down Santiago Canyon

Road fearing the day they would develop it. Now I can die happy.”

Even Joan Irvine Smith -- the reigning matriarch of the Irvine family

who’s collided often with Bren over his stewardship of her grandfather’s

ranch -- found herself nearly weepy. She was seen to verbally pat Bren on

the head, telling him, “I’m so impressed by what you’ve done here. I

could not have done it better myself.”

Only a few hard-boiled skeptics -- who, I sometimes think, believe

that we’d all be better off if we were still wearing animal skins and

fishing with our teeth -- uttered faint cynicism. Stop Polluting Our

Newport’s Allan Beek half scoffed that Bren’s gift was largely dirt

useless to the Irvine Co. and smacked of shameless public relations. In

Orange, where much of the wilderness that Bren set aside is located,

Christopher Koontz -- who once sued the Irvine Co. over its development

plans in that neck of the woods -- threw tepid water on the giveaway. “We

may not be saving the best land,” he told the Times.

It seems to me that these are the musings of folks who postulate that

a billionaire developer and an ingenuous conservationist can’t possibly

occupy the same body. It’s against natural law. But my guess is that

Bren, at 69, doesn’t much care what people think anymore. And not just

because he has the wisdom of age and staggering wealth going for him. I’m

pretty sure he’s appreciated and valued Orange County’s natural history

as much as he has the land he’s developed.

How do we know that?

Bren’s Irvine Co. poured millions into the 1997 San Joaquin Marsh

restoration project. He announced last year that the company is donating

$1.5 million over five years for the restoration of the San Joaquin

Wildlife Sanctuary. Back in 1992, he broke bread with the Nature

Conservancy, asking it to manage his newly created, 17,000-acre Irvine

Co. Open Space Reserve. He let go of another 21,000 acres in 1996 to

provide habitat for endangered plant and animal species.

Since then, Bren has turned over thousands of valuable natural acreage

in and around Laguna Canyon for the expansion of the Laguna Coast

Wilderness Park.

It’s for these reasons I’m not of a mind to pull on Santa Bren’s

beard. You just don’t give up the development rights to half your land

holdings without a serious interest in conservation and an appreciation

for natural history. But more than that -- and as a fourth generation

Californian whose great-great-grandfather, Anthony Reche, founded the San

Diego County town of Fallbrook -- I appreciate a guy who’s routinely made

big moves to protect some of Orange County’s historic wilderness when he

really didn’t have to.

Merry Christmas.

* BRYON DE ARAKAL is a writer and communications consultant. He lives

in Costa Mesa. Readers can reach him with news tips and comments via

e-mail at o7 byronwriter@msn.comf7 .