Grass-Roots Drive Sprouts for Santa Clarita Wilderness

With the Towsley Canyon foothills as a backdrop, state Sen. Ed Davis on Thursday gave his endorsement--and $5,000 of his campaign funds--to an initiative drive aimed at creating a state park from 6,000 privately owned acres known as the Santa Clarita Woodlands.

“We don’t need to go to Brazil to save the trees and the forest,” initiative director Kathleen G. Ungar told a group of 30 supporters gathered at the property’s eastern rim. “We can save them right here. We don’t have to go to Africa to save the lions and the wildlife. We can save them right here.”

The California Wildlife Protection Initiative would provide $30 million a year for the acquisition and preservation of wildlife habitats statewide. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the agency that would purchase the parkland, would be guaranteed $5 million a year for 10 years. Of that sum, $1 million annually, or a total of $10 million, would go toward acquiring the property.

Grass-Roots Effort

The initiative drive, a grass-roots effort that has broadened to include local and state officials, was officially launched last month. The group already has gathered 175,000 of the 600,000 signatures needed to qualify the measure for the June, 1990, ballot, Ungar said.

The lush woodlands, which Davis characterized as “utterly fabulous,” are home to deer, bears and mountain lions. There are more than 500,000 oak trees of five varieties, said Don Mullally, one of the project’s earliest and most enthusiastic proponents. And there are groves of black walnut, cottonwood and ash trees.

It is an area also rich in other flora, with an annual rainfall in spots almost double that of downtown Los Angeles.

The initiative is the latest in a series of efforts to preserve the land in its natural state and create what supporters called “the greatest park project ever done in Southern California.” Davis (R-Valencia) has introduced two related measures that he said he expects to have on Gov. George Deukmejian’s desk by September.

Eligible for Funding

The first would include the woodlands in the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor. As part of that corridor of trails and parks on the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley, the woodlands would be eligible for funding from Proposition 70, a $776-million statewide bond measure for parks that was approved by voters in 1988. The proposition sets aside $10 million for Rim of the Valley purchases.

That measure cleared the state Senate without opposition and is awaiting approval from the Assembly.

The second Davis measure is a resolution calling for a comprehensive study to determine whether a park should be created from the 6,000 acres. That resolution, which has already cleared the Assembly, needs final approval from the state Senate.

“But the real question is where the dollars come from,” Davis said. “With all the other demands for dollars, the odds of us getting a park are slim. This companion initiative would provide the money” to buy the property from several landowners.