Conservancy Acquires Link for Wildlife Corridor

Saying the land is a crucial wildlife corridor, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for more than a decade has tried to acquire five acres north of the Ventura Freeway’s Liberty Canyon Road exit.

On Wednesday morning, conservancy officials, a handful of area politicians and park rangers celebrated the purchase of the commercially zoned property that connects more than 10,000 acres of protected public land in the Simi Hills.

“Now, from here all the way to the Santa Clarita woodlands is protected open space,” said Joseph T. Edmiston, head of the conservancy. “This is a small, but critical component. If this was commercially developed, the wildlife corridor would stop here.”

For more than 25 years, the property owned by the Haserjian family was marked with a 30-foot-high billboard for the family business, Carpeteria.

Founded in 1979 to preserve land in the environmentally sensitive region, the conservancy purchased the land from the Haserjians for $1.4 million with funds from Proposition A, a 1992 voter-approved bond measure to develop parks and open space.

“One of the reasons it took us so long to buy it is because seven different family members owned it,” said Paul Edelman, chief ecologist for the conservancy. “There was really no majority camp.”

On Wednesday, about a dozen people, including conservancy and park officials and Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, put on leather gloves and yanked the billboard down by tugging on a thick rope attached to the sign. The small group cheered as the wooden billboard toppled.

“I’ve passed this sign 1,000 times and seen how it has obscured the beautiful view of the mountains,” Edmiston said. “I always wished I could tear it down, and now the time has finally come!”

More important than the view, he said, is that conserving the land will ensure that the area will remain a habitat for such creatures as mountain lions and bobcats, which thrive in the Santa Monica Mountains.