The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is an

agency Agency may refer to: Organizations * Institution, governmental or others ** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients ** Employment agency, a business that ...

of the state of

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

founded in 1980 and dedicated to the acquisition of land for preservation as open space, for

wildlife Wildlife refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous to game: those birds and mammals that were hunted f ...

and

California native plants California native plants are plants that existed in California prior to the arrival of European explorers and colonists in the late 18th century. California includes parts of at least three phytochoria. The largest is the California Floristic ...

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

Nature Preserves, and for public

recreation Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or ple ...

activities. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy was established by the California State Legislature in 1980. Since that time, it has helped to preserve over 72,000 acres of parkland in both wilderness and urban settings, and improved more than 114 public recreational facilities throughout Southern California. Additionally, it has given grants to nonprofit organizations for educational and interpretation programs that have served hundreds of thousands of children and other park visitors.

Territory protected

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy territory originally was within the

Santa Susana Mountains The Santa Susana Mountains are a transverse range of mountains in Southern California, north of the city of Los Angeles, in the United States. The range runs east-west, separating the San Fernando and Simi valleys on its south from the Santa ...

and

Santa Monica Mountains The Santa Monica Mountains is a coastal mountain range in Southern California, next to the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Transverse Ranges. Because of its proximity to densely populated regions, it is one of the most visited natural areas in ...

, and the

Simi Hills The Simi Hills are a low rocky mountain range of the Transverse Ranges in eastern Ventura County and western Los Angeles County, of southern California, United States. Geography The Simi Hills are aligned east-west and run for , and average ar ...

; areas located north and west of metropolitan

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

Ventura County Ventura County () is a County (United States), county in Southern California, the southern part of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 843,843. The largest city is Oxnard, California ...

and

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is th ...

. Since then its territory has been extended to the east to include parks in the

San Gabriel Mountains The San Gabriel Mountains ( es, Sierra de San Gabriel) are a mountain range located in northern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Transverse Ranges and lies between ...

Verdugo Mountains The Verdugo Mountains, also known as the Verdugo Hills or simply The Verdugos, are a small, rugged mountain range of the Transverse Ranges system in Los Angeles County, California. Located just south of the western San Gabriel Mountains, the Ver ...

, San Rafael Hills, and Puente Hills. The 450,000-

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

(180,000 ha) "zone" in which the conservancy can acquire land is bounded on the south by the Pacific Coast Highway from

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...

to Point Mugu. The zone extends inland roughly 50 miles (80 km) from Malibu north to

Newhall Pass Newhall Pass is a low mountain pass in Los Angeles County, California. Historically called Fremont Pass and San Fernando Pass, with Beale's Cut, it separates the Santa Susana Mountains from the San Gabriel Mountains. Although the pass was visit ...

and 65 miles (105 km) from Thousand Oaks east to

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. Its ...

. Several major freeways in Los Angeles cross the zone, including the

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

, Ventura,

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

and

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Calif ...

Preservation process

Since its founding, the Conservancy has acquired over 155,000 acres (63,000 ha) and identified another 15,000 acres (6,100 ha) within its zone as crucial for preservation. In addition to buying land outright, the Conservancy operates through public-private partnerships to promote low-density use among private land-owners. The conservancy also acquires rights to land through "time-leasing", receives land through donations and acquisition of foreclosures, and as mitigation for development projects. The Conservancy zone includes the 155,000-acre (63,000 ha)

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a United States national recreation area containing many individual parks and open space preserves, located primarily in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. The SMMNRA is in ...

, created by the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washi ...

in 1978, as well as 40,000 acres (16,000 ha) of state parks, including Topanga State Park, and parks within Los Angeles' city limits including the Marvin Braude Mulholland Gateway Park above Tarzana.

Some examples

Additions

The Conservancy was responsible for the 1990s acquisition of the Jordan Ranch lands in the western

near Thousand Oaks from entertainer

Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in Bob Hope filmography, more than 70 short and ...

, creating th
Cheeseboro and Palo Commado Canyons Park
section of the

(SMMNRA). The ranch was purchased by a developer and turned over the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government within the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of ...

as part of a land development deal, which then allowed their development of new housing and golf courses on the Ahmanson Ranch land adjacent to the east. Late in 2003, the Conservancy secured state funds to purchase Ahmanson Ranch as well, creating the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve, a huge

green belt A green belt is a policy and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wilderness, wild, or agricultural landscape, land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenway (lan ...

on the western edge of West Hills and Woodland Hills. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy also acquired the

Peter Strauss Ranch The Peter Strauss Ranch is a regional park unit of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area - and operated by the National Park Service as Peter Strauss Ranch Park. It is located in the central Santa Monica Mountains — on Mulholland H ...

from the entertainer

Peter Strauss Peter Lawrence Strauss (born February 20, 1947) is an American television and film actor, known for his roles in several television miniseries in the 1970s and 1980s. He is five-time Golden Globe Awards nominee. Early life Strauss was born in ...

in the central Santa Monica Mountains, which was also turned over to the National Park Service and opened to the public in the SMMNRA. The Conservancy is one of the four agencies sharing operation of the Santa Monica Mountains Anthony C. Beilenson Interagency Visitor Center, located at the former King Gillette Ranch stables. It is located at 26876

Mulholland Highway Mulholland Highway is a scenic road in Los Angeles County, California, that runs approximately 50 miles through the western Santa Monica Mountains from near US Route 101 (Ventura Freeway) in Calabasas to Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) near ...

, at the junction with Las Virgenes/Malibu Canyon Road near

Calabasas Calabasas may refer to: * Calabasas, Arizona, former populated place in what is now Rio Rico, Arizona * Calabasas, California, city in Los Angeles County, California See also * Calabaza Calabaza is the generic name in the Spanish languag ...

. The stables and Gillette mansion were originally designed by

Wallace Neff Edwin Wallace Neff (January 28, 1895 – June 8, 1982) was an architect based in Southern California and was largely responsible for developing the region's distinct architectural style referred to as "California" style. Neff was a student of ...

in the 1920s. The completed redesign project is the first visitor center in a

zero-energy building A Zero Energy Building (ZEB), also known as a Net Zero Energy (NZE) building, is a building with net zero energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to the amount of renewable energy ...

in the National Park Service, and is LEED certified. It is named for

Anthony C. Beilenson Anthony Charles Beilenson (October 26, 1932 – March 5, 2017) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a Democratic Congressman from Southern California. He served ten terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1977 unt ...

, the former congressman who authored legislation in 1978 to establish the SMMNRA. The center is operated by the four partner agencies in the park: the National Park Service, California State Parks, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA).

Subtractions

As reported in the ''Los Angeles Times'', controversy ensued when the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy voted in April 2014 to drop its opposition to the large Dave Evans subdivision development proposal for Malibu, in exchange for $1 million in donations and consulting work. The singer Dave Evans, a.k.a. "

The Edge David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), better known as the Edge or simply Edge,McCormick (2006), pp. 21, 23–24 is an English-born Irish musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist, keyboardist, and backing voca ...

", with the Irish rock band U2, has proposed a compound of five mansions on a coast−facing Santa Monica Mountains ridge, above Serra Canyon on Sweetwater Mesa Road. Malibu residents and environmentalists have opposed the project as excessive development and viewshed destruction, and have called into question the ethics of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy regarding the proposal. The

California Coastal Commission The California Coastal Commission (CCC) is a state agency within the California Natural Resources Agency with quasi-judicial control of land and public access along the state's coastline. Its mission as defined in the California Coastal Act is ...

postponed its October 2014 vote on the project until 2015. Joe Edmiston, the conservancy's executive director, said his group had been wrong to agree to those terms to drop its opposition. The California Supreme Court rejected the scheme in 2018.

References

External links

Official Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (SMMC) websiteSMMC: Map of the Conservancy Zone
— ''The Santa Monica Mountains and Rim of the Valley Corridor''.
SMMC: Our Open Space and Parks searchengine websiteMountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA): homepage
{{authority control Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area California Natural Resources Agency Environmental organizations based in California Santa Monica Mountains State agencies of California Nature conservation organizations based in the United States Environment of California Land management in the United States Organizations based in Los Angeles County, California Organizations based in Ventura County, California Protected areas of Los Angeles County, California Protected areas of Ventura County, California 1980 establishments in California Government agencies established in 1980