Making One Big Park From Many Pieces

Take a canyon here and a ranch there. Add thousands of acres of chaparral, a few state parks and beaches, and a mountain range.

Draw a rough line around all that and you have the Santa Monica National Recreation Area, a 150,000-acre patchwork of public and private land in Los Angeles and Ventura counties that could represent the shape of national parks to come.

That kind of a piecemeal park stretching from Point Mugu to Santa Monica, with an ecosystem as varied as the parties that own its land, presents veteran National Park Service employee Arthur Eck the challenge of his career.

Eck, the newly appointed superintendent of the Santa Monica National Recreation Area, will be charged with pulling it all together, making the disparate area into a cohesive park.

“In many ways, the Santa Monica Mountains represent the kind of national park that we will see in the future,” said Eck, 46, who will take over the new position July 9. “There just aren’t many opportunities left to set aside vast areas like Yosemite or the Grand Tetons. This is a chance to help set the direction of the Park Service nationwide.”

Because there are few large tracts of wild lands left, parks of the future will have multiple owners, as the Santa Monicas do, Eck said.

Eck’s work at the Redwood National Forest creating cooperative agreements with the state will be a great boon to the Santa Monicas, said Scott E. Erickson, deputy superintendent at the Santa Monicas.

“The Redwoods have one of the most innovative cooperative agreements with the state and the Park Service,” he said, noting that the park shares campgrounds and rangers. “We’ll probably see that here under Art’s leadership.”

With recent and projected cuts in funding for local, state and federal parks, cooperation is essential to get the most for the public’s dollar, Erickson said. “Not one of us stands a chance of getting the job done separately,” he said.

Eck, a native of Thermopolis, Wyo., began his career with the Park Service in 1977 as a legislative affairs specialist in Washington. He served as assistant superintendent in the Ozarks National Scenic Riverways in southern Missouri, and has been assistant superintendent at Redwood National Park near Eureka since 1988.

During his years in Washington, Eck helped fine-tune legislation that created the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 1978. The expansive area that ranges from just south of the Ventura Freeway south to the ocean shoreline, and from Point Mugu to Santa Monica, contains some of the most diverse land in any of the national parks, Eck said.

It is home to 10 endangered species of plants and animals, with another 50 species being considered for endangered status. In addition, 13 species of raptors nest in the area, along with 369 bird species. Fifty species of mammals find shelter in the area and 36 kinds of reptiles and amphibians slither among the rocks and shrubs. Within the boundaries are also two of the state’s only remaining salt marshes.

And the type of ecosystem within the Santa Monicas, which includes the hillside chaparral with the oceanside climate, exists in only four other places on earth.

Another unusual aspect of the park is its close proximity to cities in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, making it accessible to millions of people.

“The greatness of the Santa Monica Mountains area lies not only in the richness of the resource, but that it serves as a gateway to the National Park system itself,” said Eck. “It serves that role better than some other parks that would make a great postcard.”

But many areas of the Santa Monicas make for postcard-perfect vistas as well.

Just 10 minutes south of Thousand Oaks, a few miles up windy Westlake Boulevard before the turnoff onto Mulholland Highway, a look back offers a stunning view that is quintessentially Southern California: golden hills dotted with oaks and abounding in wildflowers, with spears of flowering yucca plants shooting up to claim dominance over the hillside.

“The Santa Monicas capture the natural essence of one of the most beautiful places on earth,” Eck said later. “There is a reason that Southern California has attracted so many people.”

But the park is still “a work in progress,” he said, explaining that the National Park Service still needs to develop more programs for visitors and buy more land.

“When you work in a place like Yellowstone, the Army laid out the roads there 100 years ago. A lot of their options are closed off. Here, it is a great opportunity to make a lot of decisions, a lot of good choices, I hope.”

But any opportunities could be curtailed if funding dries up, as many fear it will.

Eck may be the best man to handle that challenge, said Ruth Kilday, who heads the nonprofit Mountains Conservancy Foundation, which helps the park build visitors centers.

“It’s wonderful to get someone with so much experience working with the legislative office of the National Park Service who knows the ropes in Washington, D.C.” Kilday said.

The Park Service also works closely with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that buys land for later resale or donation to the park. The conservancy also owns and manages some parklands.

“The major challenge is making sure we have a contiguous public parkland in place to protect the wildlife corridors, trails and the scenic quality of the mountains,” said Rorie Skei, division chief for the conservancy. “It is less important who owns what.”