Campus to Launch 2 Environmental Treks

Environmentalists and city slickers yearning for country living will gather at Pierce College this weekend for separate, but similar events designed to showcase the importance of protecting the natural environment.

Today, the Woodland Hills campus will be the first stop on a four-day trek to bring attention to the plight of two pieces of land that environmentalists are hoping to save from development projects.

Participants in the Earth Water Air L.A. walk will meet at 9:30 a.m. at the end of Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills, before embarking on a five-mile walk to the college.

The street is on the border of Ahmanson Ranch, a proposed development planned in neighboring Ventura County, and Pierce will be the end of the first leg of a journey from Ahmanson to the Ballona Wetlands in the South Bay.

The walk is sponsored by SEE/Save Ahmanson, the Sierra Club, the Baykeeper, the Surfrider Foundation, the Earth Trust Foundation and Rainforest Action Network.

At the campus, walkers will eat lunch and listen to speakers before boarding a bus back to the starting point. Some walkers will then continue their trek, ending Wednesday at the wetlands.

On Sunday, Pierce College reintroduces its Farm Walk, dormant for more than a year but rescheduled to raise funds for the college’s cash-strapped agriculture department.

The festivities will include a self-guided tour of the farm, nature walks, entertainment, sheep shearing, wool spinning, horseshoeing and grooming demonstrations.

The walk will be accessible to strollers and wheelchairs, but organizers ask that no dogs be brought because of the livestock wandering along the road.

The Pierce College teaching farm, 6201 Winnetka Ave., will be open to the public from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Enter the campus at the gate on Victory Boulevard and Mason Avenue.

Admission is $5, general, free for children 12 and younger.

For more information about the farm walk, call (818) 710-4105.

For more information about the Earth Water Air L.A. walk, call (818) 380-1513.