Santa Cruz County, CA Drone Rules: Recreational Drones (2026)

58, adopted by Ordinance 5460 in 2024, sets site-specific rules for the roughly 6,000-acre Cotoni-Coast Dairies Unit of the California Coastal National Monument, land the Bureau of Land Management manages in unincorporated Santa Cruz County near Davenport. " The same subsection separately bans paragliders and hang-gliders from launching or landing in the unit. The prohibition sits alongside 20 other site rules in the same subsection covering off-trail use, e-bikes, off-leash pets, campfires, metal detecting and target shooting, so drone takeoff and landing is treated the same as the unit's other outright bans rather than as a permitted-with-conditions activity.

040 carves out a narrow exemption for federal, state or local officers acting within the scope of their duties, organized law enforcement, rescue or fire personnel on official duty, and anyone the Bureau of Land Management has authorized in writing. 050 lets federal or state officers, BLM law enforcement, or Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office peace officers enforce the chapter. This is a land-use rule tied to a specific BLM parcel, not a county-wide airspace regulation; the FAA controls national airspace and preempts local flight-path or altitude rules, so the county cannot and does not attempt to regulate where drones may fly once airborne outside this unit. Outside Cotoni-Coast Dairies, the county code does not otherwise restrict recreational drone takeoff or landing on private land.