UCSD Continues to Exclude Public and Its Students From 1000-Acre Coastal Reserve in Rich Neighborhood

Coastal Commission Public Hearing Keeps Getting Postponed

By Quinn Welsch / Courthouse News Service / January 30, 2026

For Ghalia Mohder, “the Knoll” is more than just a tall mesa overlooking the view at Scripps Coastal Reserve along the San Diego coastline.

Mohder said that she first discovered the Knoll — and its historic view of the Pacific Ocean — during her freshman year at University of California San Diego after a resident advisor in her college dorm took her and some other students for a visit.

“To be honest, ever since then I was hooked,” she said. “You could always go to La Jolla Shores and it’s a big public place, there was partying going on. This place was different. The people who went there, went there to enjoy the scenery.”

But public access to the Knoll has remained locked behind a gate along the mansion-lined La Jolla Farms Road community since 2020.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the university has restricted public access to a small number of people each week. Despite the passage of six years and multiple scheduled public hearings at the California Coastal Commission, that access remains limited and no resolution is apparent.

The Scripps Coastal Reserve is a nearly 1,000-acre reserve owned by UCSD that encompasses sandy shores, coastal canyons, a steep cliff face, and mesa top — the latter of which is known as the Mesa or Knoll, which overlooks a sweeping view of the ocean.

The beach remains open from other publicly available locations, but the gate to the Knoll and its beach trail has remained locked, despite the state’s lifting of Covid-19 precautions in 2023.

Efforts by the California Coastal Commission to bring the UCSD’s future plans for the Scripps Coastal Reserve to a public hearing have so far not been fruitful. Starting in 2024, permit applications for a managed access plan have been submitted, extended and withdrawn, only to start all over again.

UCSD’s latest managed access plan was slated for a public hearing in February, but was withdrawn and resubmitted earlier this month, resetting the clock for a new public hearing. Now, the new deadline for a hearing is not until July 11.

Coastal commission staff have said that this resubmission is necessary to buy enough time to reach an appropriate solution due to the complexities of the Knoll.

Under the California Coastal Act of 1972, the California Coastal Commission is required to maximize public access to the approximately 1,200 miles of beaches between Oregon and Mexico. But that also means balancing the desire for public access with the need to preserve ecological resources and cultural resources, such as sensitive indigenous heritage sites, both of which are present at the Knoll, commission staff said.

But some members of the public now suspect that the closure of the area is an intentional way of keeping UCSD students and other members of the public out of the affluent neighborhood.

A UCSD tradition
Mohder, a 2006 graduate of UCSD, has been raising the alarm over the closure of the reserve for the last few years. This issue is a clear case of big money triumphing over the public, she told Courthouse News.

“I know the world isn’t exactly fair and I get that but, I assumed the Coastal Commission would take our case,” she said. “I thought this was a clear violation. The pretenses were nauseating. I thought that the squeaky wheel would get oil if we shed light on it, but it’s been nothing.”

Mohder, now an audiologist raising a family in Corona, California, said that she planned to show some of her family members the reserve during a visit to San Diego in 2021, but discovered the locked gate.

“I just felt like it was so wrong,” she said.

Mohder is joined by other former UCSD students and some professors who have also continued to petition the California Coastal Commission and UCSD to reopen the Knoll. Among them is David Lebowitz, who first visited the reserve during his freshman year in 1999.

The Knoll overlooking the Pacific Ocean inspired his lifelong love for nature.

“The power of nature there is so much more intense than anything I had ever experienced,” said Lebowitz, a La Jolla resident. “Sitting up there, you can see dolphins jumping through the water. It was just a very peaceful place. It’s not as heavily used as Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve.”

A view of Blacks Beach in San Diego from the Scripps Coastal Reserve bluff, which has been closed to the public for six years. (Courthouse News via Ghalia Mohder)
Mohder described visiting the Knoll as a right of passage for UCSD’s freshmen. Like Mohder, Lebowitz has also continued to raise the alarm over the prolonged closure of the Knoll.

Because of how long the reserve has been closed, Lebowitz said that the current batch of UCSD students don’t even know about the reserve. Lebowitz himself would visit the site multiple times a day, almost every day.

“The overwhelming users of that reserve were UCSD students,” he said.

Environmental concerns
The Knoll, according to UCSD’s application for a managed access plan is about 17 acres of land, 400 feet up from Black’s Beach, best known for its hang gliding and clothing-optional shores.

The university maintains that reopening the reserve’s Knoll to the general public could potentially damage the natural environment, which has rebounded since the closure, according to an email from university spokeswoman Melinda Battenberg.

“For example, managed access of visitors is thought to have allowed sensitive wildlife to return to the reserve and has greatly aided removal of invasive species that had disrupted native vegetation on the site,” Battenberg wrote.

However, UCSD ecology professor Carolyn Kurle argues that there is data that says the opposite is true. In a letter shared with Courthouse News, Kurle says that the inability to freely and regularly bring environmental volunteers to the location has been more detrimental to the ecology. According to Kurle, aerial photography shows that this is the case.

“The improvements to the [reserve] were presumably because conservation activities performed by committed and regular volunteers were likely much higher during the time when access was more open simply because there were many more opportunities for restoration volunteerism,” she wrote. “Thus, the more open access actually appears to have improved the Knoll and contributed positively to its wildlife conservation.”

However, access to the Knoll is not completely forbidden.

The public can contact the university’s Natural Reserve System for a docent-led tour of the Knoll during the first Saturday of the month between 9-11 a.m. The public can also apply to work as a volunteer in the reserve to help maintain the natural environment on Fridays between 8-10 a.m.

The university’s proposed plan would continue this level of access going forward to more effectively steward the resources on the Knoll, which is consistent with 39 of the university’s 42 other reserves in its system, Battenberg said.

Commission staff said that UCSD has been coordinating with them for more information. There have been three different application submissions so far, they said.

For now, there are no plans for a public hearing on the Knoll’s continued closure. Commission staff said that it could happen as early as March. The July deadline could see a potential 90-day extension. Or, as has been the case, the application could be withdrawn and 180-day deadline reset.