The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is an agency of the state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

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 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

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

wildlife Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...

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 A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...

, 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 pleasur ...

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 C ...

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 arou ...

; 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 world' ...

Ventura County Ventura County () is a county in the southern part of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 843,843. The largest city is Oxnard, and the county seat is the city of Ventura. Ventura County comprises the Oxnar ...

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 the ...

. 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, California, Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Tr ...

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 The San Rafael Hills are a mountain range in Los Angeles County, California. They are one of the lower Transverse Ranges, and are parallel to and below the San Gabriel Mountains, adjacent to the San Gabriel Valley overlooking the Los Angeles Bas ...

, and

Puente Hills The Puente Hills are a chain of hills, one of the lower Transverse Ranges, in an unincorporated area in eastern Los Angeles County, California, in the United States. The western end of the range is often referred to locally as the Whittier Hills. ...

. The 450,000-

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imp ...

(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 ...

Point Mugu Point Mugu (, Chumash: ''Muwu'') is a cape or promontory within Point Mugu State Park on the Pacific Coast in Ventura County, near the city of Port Hueneme and the city of Oxnard. The name is believed to be derived from the Chumash Indian term ...

. 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 visite ...

and 65 miles (105 km) from

Thousand Oaks Thousand Oaks is the second-largest city in Ventura County, California, United States. It is in the northwestern part of Greater Los Angeles, approximately from the city of Los Angeles and from Downtown. It is named after the many oak tree ...

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. ...

. Several major freeways in Los Angeles cross the zone, including the Hollywood, 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 List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

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 Califor ...

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 t ...

, 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 Washing ...

in 1978, as well as 40,000 acres (16,000 ha) of state parks, including

Topanga State Park Topanga State Park () is a California state park located in the Santa Monica Mountains, within Los Angeles County, California. It is part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The park is located adjacent to the community of ...

, and parks within Los Angeles' city limits including the

Marvin Braude Mulholland Gateway Park Marvin Braude Mulholland Gateway Park is a park in the Santa Monica Mountains, with its trailhead at the southern terminus of Reseda Boulevard in Tarzana, Los Angeles, California. The park was named for former Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin ...

above Tarzana.

Some examples

Additions

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

near

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 more than 70 short and feature films, with 5 ...

, 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 agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

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 The Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve is a large open space nature preserve owned and operated by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy spanning nearly in the Simi Hills of western Los Angeles County and eastern Ventura County. Or ...

, 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, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges, which hav ...

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

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 King Camp Gillette (January 5, 1855 – July 9, 1932) was an American businessman who invented a bestselling version of the safety razor. Gillette's innovation was the thin, inexpensive, disposable blade of stamped steel. Gillette is often err ...

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) nea ...

, at the junction with Las Virgenes/Malibu Canyon Road near Calabasas. 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 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a green building certification program used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), it includes a set of rating systems for the design, constructio ...

. It is named for Anthony C. Beilenson, 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 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