Conservancy Should Keep Its Focus Local : Purchase at Wilson Canyon strains agency’s resources

It’s possible for Wilson Canyon to appear as though it is close to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It just requires a really small map.

Wilson Canyon is north of Sylmar, which is in the northernmost regions of the rather sizable San Fernando Valley. That puts it one heckuva lot closer to the Santa Susana and San Gabriel mountains than it does to the Santa Monicas.

By contrast, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is south of the Ventura Freeway in the Valley, running east from Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County to Griffith Park.

The geography lesson is necessary because of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s recent announcement of an agreement to purchase 246 acres of mountainous land at Wilson Canyon for about $3.9 million.

This preserves as open space a parcel of land that is considered a critical segment of the proposed Rim of the Valley trail system. We suppose that’s so. And the purchase was hailed by the likes of Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) as proof that “there is open space in the northeast Valley that is worth purchasing as much as in the Santa Monica Mountains.” We suppose that could be true, too.

But the problem is that the Mountains Conservancy’s future buying power, which has already dropped considerably from the salad days of 1989 to 1993, figures to plummet further still in the newly retooled Congress.

The problem is also that there is still much to do in terms of acquiring land rights in the Santa Monicas, which is the conservancy’s principal mandate. The conservancy has an increasingly expensive legal battle with Soka University over some of that land. Other conservancy efforts are also rather far afield--although the conservancy doesn’t seem to think this is a problem.

All of this means that there will be less for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area proper, and even less, if any, for land that is not at least remotely close to it.

Yes, Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills)--the recreation area’s best friend on Capitol Hill--was returned to the Congress. But he figures to have less clout in a Republican-controlled House and Senate, and the Santa Monicas figure to be pretty far down the new leadership’s money list.

Meanwhile, Times Staff Writer Jon D. Markman reports that a dozen residential development companies have made plans to create or complete major home projects in the Santa Monicas. Much of the land that figures in the new development boom, which has now been joined by individual property owners, is perched on the ridgelines between Griffith Park and Woodland Hills. These are places that the conservancy has an interest in purchasing. Will it be able to compete?

And if the conservancy needed another sign of how little there may be for purchasing in the future, it certainly had to look no farther than Gov. Wilson’s veto, this past July, of more than $7 million for funding and programs outside the mountain ranges rimming the Valley.

Previously, the conservancy had been criticized for its attempts to purchase a 780-acre parcel of land in Santa Barbara’s Santa Ynez Valley, and a 546-acre parcel between the San Gabriel Mountains and the Cleveland National Forest.

In its defense, the conservancy has argued that the region will be left with a biological island if it only focuses on the Santa Monica Mountains. That is an environmentally noble sentiment. The money crunch is the reality, however. It means, unfortunately, that there will be fewer Wilson Canyons to applaud and more of a need to restrict purchases to the Santa Monica Mountains and its immediate environs.