OJAI : Support Grows to Save Besant Meadow
A battle to save Ojai’s Besant Meadow for a wildlife habitat and park is getting help from county officials and state and national environmental groups.
“It’s really broken loose in the last week. I’ve even been getting calls from Washington, D.C.,” said Richard Handley, an Ojai teacher and director of the local Besant Meadows Preservation Group.
The new land conservancy hopes to buy a 25.5-acre field with wetland stream and 30-species eucalyptus grove. Nudging Ojai’s city limits in Meiners Oaks, the parcel is bordered by houses, three schools and the Ranch House restaurant’s herb garden.
The group of 300 members, which has $1,000 on hand, may need $1.4 million to buy the land from a family trust, Handley said. The family “said they’d be more than happy to oblige us. But we haven’t submitted an offer.”
A number of politicians and environmental groups are helping the local preservation group find funding sources. They include Ventura County Supervisor Susan K. Lacey, the Santa Barbara Land Trust, Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria), the Planning and Conservation League and the Environmental Support Group in Washington, D.C.
Last year, the group gave county officials 1,000 signatures collected in four days to protest a 50-house development on the meadow. The developer later lost a long lawsuit against the county over the county’s 1988 ban on new subdivisions in Ojai Valley.
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