Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area Threatened

[drclark]

Saw this article in the daily breeze today. Anyone know of any trails in the area directly mentioned in the article? Would be nice if there was a map of the area showing privately owned vs public land.

drc

http://www.dailybreeze.com//ci_88466...ailybreeze.com

SM recreation area threatened

By Susan Abram
Article Launched: 04/07/2008 11:20:21 PM PDT

Rapid development jeopardizes the future of the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area, threatening up to 1,000 species of plantlife and hundreds of animals, according to a national report to be released today.
Nearly 1,300 acres of private land within the recreation area are lost each year to development, which could add up to 70,000 lost acres by 2062 - a little less than half the entire park, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group.
To protect the area, the government would have to buy some $62 million worth of private land, but the National Parks Service hasn't had any funding for acquisition of land since 2000, according to the NPCA.
Park funding had fallen 10percent annually in recent years, though this year it increased nearly 20 percent to $7.7 million, said Woody Smeck, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of the national park system.
"The administration has chosen to redirect our spending priorities on improving the maintenance on what we already own," Smeck said. "But it's a challenge in that with critical lands we would like to acquire, we haven't been able to do so, and those lands are under potential development."
Of immediate concern is 25,000 acres of privately owned land that falls roughly between the state parks of Malibu Creek and Point Mugu, and national areas such as Zuma and Trancas canyons. Smeck said the park wants the land to create a north-south wildlife corridor through a patchwork of federal, state and private lands.

"To date, we are about halfway through that vision of acquiring parcels of land from willing sellers to create this," Smeck said. "But without the acquisition, the recreational trail system is still fragmented with gaps that need to be filled in."
The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area includes 154,095 acres of canyons, coastal ridges and trails and federal, state and private properties. It includes 26 different ZIP codes, more than any other national park system.
The recreation area is considered the world's largest urban national park, but the report found that volunteers pitch in with upkeep due to limited federal money.
Critics of the report say that even if federal funds were available to purchase privately held lands within the Santa Monica Recreation Area, there would not be enough money to maintain them.
"There's no hope of the park service ever catching up," said Chuck Cushman, a former San Fernando Valley resident and founder of the American Land Rights Association.
"What are we doing buying all this new land and putting the park service in jeopardy, when the park service does not have the money to take care of it?"
Landowner Ty Sisson owns several acres within the park, some bought before Congress deemed the more than 150,000 acres a national recreation area, and some after.
"I have land the national park service wants and I am a willing seller," he said. "Some of it has been appraised, but they didn't have the money to buy it."
Sisson agreed with the report, that development could mushroom if buyers are willing to muddle through the zoning and protection laws set in place over the years.
"It is true that if they don't buy these parcels, they will eventually be lost in development," Sisson said. "I had two of these parcels sold to private developers, but because of loan problems they backed out."
The fact that private property could end up in the hands of developers who have the time and money to overcome the building hurdles is a concern, said Ron Sundergill, pacific regional director of the NPCA. "The basic thing is you have an incredible park that has a lot of potential to preserve and protect some incredible landscape and wildlife and plants," Sundergill said. "Some of those plants and wildlife are rare or threatened."