US Fish and Wildlife Service: A promising future for a California plant once believed extinct

The San Fernando Valley spineflower, a tiny plant once believed extinct, has a promising future thanks to support from an unlikely source — a Southern California developer. That developer, FivePoint Holdings, LLC, is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) as well as other agencies to ensure that a plant found only two places in the world will continue to grow in its native habitat. And, as the tiny, flowering buckwheat grows, so, too, will a master-planned community comprising 21,500 homes and employing 75,000 people. The project, Newhall Ranch, is taking shape west of Interstate 5 in the Santa Clarita Valley, about an hour drive northwest of Los Angeles. The project, named for the ranch that once operated in northern Los Angeles County, is immense proof that commerce and conservation can be partners.