The Santa Lucia Preserve or The Preserve is a private, 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) gated development permitting 297 homesites. It is located in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Range between Palo Corona Regional Park and Carmel Valley, California. The Preserve consists of a 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) nature reserve, 8,000 acres (3,200 ha) of open land, and 2,000 acres (810 ha) for development. It contains most of the watershed of Las Garzas Creek, a tributary of the Carmel River.

Conservation development, also known as conservation design, is a controlled-growth land use development that adopts the principle for allowing limited sustainable development while protecting the area's natural environmental features in perpetuity, including preserving open space landscape and vista, protecting farmland or natural habitats for wildlife, and maintaining the character of rural communities. A conservation development is usually defined as a project that dedicates a minimum of 50 percent of the total development parcel as open space. The management and ownership of the land are often formed by the partnership between private land owners, land-use conservation organizations and local government. It is a growing trend in many parts of the country, particularly in the Western United States. In the Eastern United States, conservation design has been promoted by some state and local governments as a technique to help preserve water quality.