Vital Link Added to Chain in Greenbelt

The cameraman got exactly the shot he wanted: the femme fatale’s lithe profile silhouetted against . . . the Ventura Freeway.

An inelegant location, perhaps, but bobcat No. 43 is at home in this patch of green next to the Liberty Canyon Road offramp.

The recent cat sighting is at the heart of why federal and local officials, environmentalists and cities have labored to create a broad swath of habitat stretching about 10 miles from the Santa Susana range south to the Santa Monica Mountains.

The idea was to weave together a continuous beltway of land from public parkland and private open space. The bigger the wildlife habitat, scientists say, the better the chance animals can successfully forage for food and water and find new mates to prevent inbreeding.

Now, a 106-acre parcel, one of the last critical links to complete this wildlife corridor, has been purchased.

The property, south of the Ventura Freeway next to where bobcat No. 43 was seen, has been at the top of Art Eck’s wish list for years.

To acquire the parcel for federal parkland, Eck, superintendent for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, structured an unusual land deal with the Los Angeles County Sanitation District, which operates the Calabasas Landfill.

The dump opened in 1961, 17 years before the Santa Monica Mountains national parkland was formed. But once the landfill was inside national recreation area boundaries, it required a special use permit from the National Park Service to continue operating, including an expansion of 50 acres.

Eck structured a 1998 deal that gave the landfill a permit in exchange for land for the Park Service.

“It’s the first and only time the National Park Service had to issue a permit for a landfill within national park land,” he said.

Eck knew which land he wanted in the swap--the 106 acres known as the Abrams parcel, which once was slated for hundreds of apartments.

That dream came to fruition late last month when the county sanitation agency bought the land for $3.2 million. Under the terms of the 1998 deal, 106 acres will be turned over to the Park Service.

“It was the most important purchase for the wildlife corridor,” said Rorie Skei, deputy director of natural resources and planning for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. “If it were developed as planned, it would have been the nail in the coffin of the viability of that corridor.”

Like giddy new homeowners, parks service and conservancy officials walked through their new acquisition recently.

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Bobcat sightings are common here, but on this day only a deer scampered in an oak-shaded canyon. A fresh rain enhanced the aroma of wild fennel and coastal sage. It was a pastoral scene--and all within earshot of the freeway’s persistent roar.

For more than a decade, the conservancy embraced the concept of preserving such wildlife corridors.

Today, the Santa Monica-Santa Susana corridor exists as a patchwork of federal parkland, such as the 625-acre Sage Ranch near Simi Valley, private land like the Rocketdyne site near Simi Valley and other open space.

The conservancy estimates it alone has spent about $50 million to acquire land along the corridor.

Yet a crucial gap remained at Liberty Canyon, with development squeezing in on all sides.

Last October, the conservancy bought five acres just north of the Ventura Freeway, leaving the missing link south of the freeway at the Abrams site.

Twenty years ago, a developer wanted to build about 600 apartments there. A more recent proposal was for 150 homes, said Betty Wiechec, an Agoura resident and consultant to Albert Abrams, the property owner.

Time was running out.

A 1987 park service study had identified the Agoura Hills-to-Hidden Hills area as one of three “choke points” where animal passageways between national forests and urban parks were threatened by freeways and development.

And although freeways can be formidable obstacles for animals, it’s the steady creep of cities that wipes out wildlife, experts say.

About a dozen key wildlife corridors remain in Southern California, said Paul Beier, associate professor of wildlife ecology at Northern Arizona University.

Some, like Coal Canyon in Orange County, which links Chino Hills State Park and the Cleveland National Forest, are intact because of efforts to buy or preserve land.

In a successful corridor, Beier said, animals aren’t forced to make many treacherous freeway crossings between habitat zones.

“If one deer uses it twice a year, that’s quite a bit,” he said. “The important thing to remember is these animals don’t need to use this every day.”

To ensure genetic diversity in carnivores such as bobcats and mountain lions, an animal may need to move to a new habitat only once or twice a generation, said Ray Sauvajot, chief of planning, science and resource management for the Santa Monica national recreation area.

A just completed, yearlong Cal State Northridge study monitored 15 potential animal crossings for four days each month.

Adjacent to the Abrams parcel, 15 deer had passed under the Ventura Freeway on Liberty Canyon Road--the most popular deer crossing in the study. Smaller animals, such as raccoons and skunks, were able to squeeze through a culvert that runs under the freeway.

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A separate, ongoing National Park Service study that for years has tracked radio-collared animals such as bobcat No. 43 discovered that one bobcat last summer crossed the freeway twice at Liberty Canyon, said Seth Riley, a Park Service wildlife ecologist.

The study is tracking three female bobcats in Liberty Canyon north of the freeway, two south of the freeway, and two more in Malibu Creek State Park, but more cats roam the region that aren’t radio-collared for research, Riley added.

When bobcat No. 43 was being filmed for cable television’s Animal Planet network, it was lounging on a three-acre parcel immediately south of the freeway.

The conservancy had already bought and enhanced this small land wedge, which sits between the south side of the freeway and the Abrams land.

Oaks, walnut and elderberry have been planted in a creek channel. Soon, a nearby fence will be removed from an adjacent commercial building to improve wildlife crossings.

And Paul Edelman, the conservancy’s chief of planning and natural resources, dreams of a tunnel that could be built under the freeway for even better wildlife access.

Animals, including bobcat No. 43, don’t seem to need freeway sound walls to live here.

“She was found sleeping just 30 yards downhill from the freeway,” said Riley, recalling the cat’s new stardom. “But she hasn’t crossed under the freeway yet.”

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Expanded Territory

Acquisition of the 106-acre Abrams property added a key link to a wildlife corridor enabling animals to roam north and south of the Ventura Freeway. The shaded area is public parkland.