Conserving Open Space Is the Goal

Joe Dillman was scarcely out of breath when he reached the top of a wide gravel path in the middle of the Los Robles trail system in Thousand Oaks.

“Just a few minutes on the bike and I’ve gone from the city to the wilderness,” the 70-year-old cyclist said. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

Dillman and the 50 other volunteer rangers who routinely patrol the trails that cut through the chaparral around Thousand Oaks credit a tiny city agency and the powerful forces behind it for preserving the land that brings them so much pleasure.

Since its inception in 1977, the Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency (COSCA) has helped the city amass 14,000 acres of untarnished land in vast pockets around Thousand Oaks.

And, in addition to its ongoing effort to preserve that space, COSCA is constantly hunting for new land.

Last week the agency added another acre to its holdings when Los Angeles builder Patriot Homes, Inc., came before the Planning Commission seeking approval to construct 45 townhomes north of Hillcrest Drive.

Part of the development bordered the Westlake North Ranch open space, and city planner Mark Towne notified the developer of COSCA’s interest in acquiring some of the land.

“Usually the land we go after is undevelopable,” Towne said. “So developers see the benefit of giving it to us.”

If developers donate the land to COSCA, he explained, they no longer have to pay taxes on it or pay for its upkeep.

And Patriot Homes used the donation of the land as a selling point for its project. When the project’s architect, Francisco Behr, came before the Planning Commission last Monday night, he urged commissioners to “take into consideration what we have been willing to do” when they made their decision.

“Deals are constantly coming and going,” said Towne, who is the only planner devoted full time to the acquisition of open space. “There are hundreds of properties that we hope someday to get ahold of.”

Eventually, he said, the goal of COSCA is to own a contiguous ring of land around the Conejo Valley.

The concept of creating a ring of open space dates to the early days of planning in Thousand Oaks.

“It was a very ambitious plan, right from the beginning,” recalled Tex Ward, then and now the general manager of the Conejo Recreation and Park District.

“The city spent a year on a General Plan which included this recreation element that envisioned the ring of open space,” Ward said. “We didn’t want it to be patchwork; we wanted linkages so that habitat could use the land and so that trails could be developed.”

The first step toward that goal was to deny construction on steep sloping property.

But as the open space grew, the park district--with only a handful of employees and one park--could not manage all of the land.

“It became apparent we needed to do a study to get a handle on what it would take to manage this open space,” Ward said. “The study pointed out to us that since the city was not in the business of managing open space and the park district was not in the business of planning, we needed to create a new agency.”

And so, COSCA was born.

The agency is a conglomeration of the city planning staff and park district staff, taking half its $488,000 budget from each agency. The staff of six--five full-time park rangers and planner Towne--report to a board of four city and park officials and a citizen member who set the agency’s policy.

But volunteers are the real force behind COSCA, said Rorie Skei, the citizen member of the COSCA board.

“There is an incredible amount of involvement on the part of volunteers,” Skei said. “We have hundreds of people come out to help repair trails and we have people doing patrols on horseback and on bikes. There is a real sense of community ownership of this land.”

For the volunteer patrols, set up by an arm of COSCA called the Conejo Open Space Trails Advisory Committee, setting out on the weekends is a way to repay the city for providing the space.

“There are a lot of organizations who I’m sure would cringe at the idea of having to find dozens of volunteers to come out here,” said Paul DeNubilo, who organizes the patrols.

“But that’s not the case here. There are a lot of people who are really looking for a way to give back to the trails and just need some guidance,” he said.

Each weekend DeNubilo has volunteers on foot, horseback and bicycle traversing the Wildwood Park and Los Robles trail systems.

Most of the time, the volunteers do nothing more than pass out maps, give directions or scold someone for letting a dog off the leash. Occasionally, though, the patrols happen upon more serious situations.

A few months ago, horseback rider Jody Martin found an overturned car leaking gasoline and reported it to one of the full-time rangers. They later learned that the truck had been stolen. And during the Green Meadow fire last fall, the volunteers helped evacuate more than 1,000 horses from stables threatened by the blaze.

In addition to patrols, residents help COSCA maintain the trails. A few times a year, hundreds of trail users come out to help mend old trails and build new ones.

The most recent group of residents to join COSCA’s effort have been those involved in Conejo Open Space Education Days, a program designed to teach elementary-aged students the value of the preserved land.

“We’ve got such a tremendous resource here, we want to get people at a young age to appreciate it,” said Elayne Haggan, the program’s director.

During the third annual Education Days, which ran from April 4 to 14, a team of naturalists, rangers and city officials visited 650 students at nine schools to talk to them about the open space.

Naturalist Tom Maxwell caused a room full of fifth-graders to cringe when he explained the value of animal “scat.” The droppings, he told them, are used to trace the variety of animals, including coyotes, foxes and a small number of mountain lions that are living in the Conejo open space.

When ranger Bruce Pace asked the Walnut School class how many of them had been on the trails, nearly all the children raised their hands.

“The way people use the trails today is really incredible,” said Ward, the parks director. “We’ve clearly seen a transformation in attitude in the past 15 years.”

It is this widespread interest and concern for open space that COSCA is trying to promote.

“In 20 years we’re going to have 14,000 acres or more of open space in the prime spot in Southern California,” Ward said. “The pressure on that land (from developers) is going to be incredible.”

Ultimately, even if a ring of open space is complete, the need to protect the land will keep COSCA in business.

“We can’t afford to let it slide,” Ward said, “because as soon as we do, Thousand Oaks will become the Hollywood Hills.”

Ring Around the Oaks

The Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency is a public agency that buys land and accepts donations as part of its effort to create a “ring of open space” around Thousand Oaks. It presently owns 14,000 acres, which it maintains by creating trails and patrolling with park rangers. This map shows current open space committed to the agency and the land that it hopes to acquire.