Limited Use of Santa Monicas Is Urged

Determined to preserve open space, the National Park Service favors a plan to guide visitors away from much of the fragile landscape of the Santa Monica Mountains.

It represents the latest effort to balance conservation of natural resources with access for the taxpayers who have spent more than $420 million to create the nation’s largest urban recreation area, a place many Angelenos consider their wild backyard.

With a tide of development licking at the fringes of the 150,000-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, planners have opted for a preservationist ethic that eventually could limit recreational uses.

The plan earmarks 80% of the land for low-intensity use: no overnight camping and no pets. Hiking, biking and horseback riding would be limited to designated trails. Facilities such as restrooms would be primitive (think wooden outhouses as opposed to cinder-block buildings housing rows of flush toilets).

Visitors would probably be shepherded onto formal trails rather than left to wander over improvised paths. Parking, signage and even rangers may be strategically used to guide people toward well-traveled routes like the Backbone Trail.

The plan also encourages people to visit during off-peak times such as weekdays and to use shuttle buses instead of cars to reach the mountains.

Now, just 30% of the recreation area--including most of the public parkland--is considered subject to low-intensity use.

“The current thought is to try to hold on to the green spaces,” said Adrienne Anderson, the National Park Service manager who supervised drafting of the plan. “When you look at an aerial photo, you have this little island of green in this huge area of development sprawling into the desert. It’s frightening,” she said. “It’s all that’s left.”

Established by Congress in 1978, the recreation area’s 235 square miles unfurl over 43 miles of mountains, valleys and coastline, from Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County to Griffith Park in Los Angeles. It is one of the world’s last Mediterranean-type ecosystems, and it shelters nine federally listed endangered animals--including brown pelicans and southern steelhead trout--and three endangered plants.

The Santa Monicas are also a cherished refuge for hikers, cyclists, equestrians and everyone else seeking an escape from the urban blanket of asphalt. The recreation area’s mandate is not only to protect nature, but also to “offer compatible recreation and education programs accessible to a diverse public,” according to its mission statement.

About 33 million visitors use the area each year, nearly 10 times the 3.4 million who visit Yosemite, according to the National Park Service.

Growth Spreads Into Mountains

Most prefer the beaches, with fewer than 10% venturing into the mountains. And though there is little evidence that hikers and cyclists have degraded the Santa Monicas, park officials are concerned about a broader trend of population growth and unchecked development. The combined population of Los Angeles and Ventura counties has soared from 8 million in 1980 to nearly 10.3 million last year.

The growth has crept into the mountains as builders flatten hillsides to put up new subdivisions. In the western Santa Monicas, for instance, Los Angeles County officials have manipulated the local growth plan to allow developers to erect 2,200 homes on land designated for 1,000.

The vast majority of the recreation area remains undeveloped, and the new federal plan--the first revision in nearly 20 years--aims to keep it that way. By the time the final version is released in December, the plan will have incorporated suggestions from more than 70 local, state and federal agencies and 10 public meetings.

The 470-page document, written with the California Department of Parks and Recreation and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, offers a broad-brush vision that would set the direction for more detailed plans to come. It describes five scenarios that emphasize varying degrees of preservation, education and recreation, but recommends the option that highlights resource preservation.

Under this alternative, visitors would be guided away from sensitive resources such as archeological sites and toward high-intensity areas such as Paramount Ranch or the campgrounds at Malibu Creek State Park. That would minimize human impact on large belts of wildlife habitat.

The plan also proposes limited development, including an education center at Mugu Lagoon, an expanded campground for Circle X Ranch, a film history museum at Paramount Ranch, and a coastal boat tour that docks at the Santa Monica and Malibu piers. The new offerings would give people more to do at a few centralized locations, leaving the bulk of the parkland in a natural state.

“I think what they’re trying to do is to focus the disturbance in as concentrated an area as they can,” said Rosi Dagit, a conservation biologist with the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, a state agency.

“When you try to concentrate use in a few places, you sort of agree that you’re going to lose those, in terms of their biological integrity, over time,” she said. “That’s the trade-off for protecting the rest.”

Plan Called Framework for Future Use

So what does this mean for the thousands of visitors who romp through these hills on knobby-tired mountain bikes or along trails atop horses? Where will it leave hikers, bird-watchers and picnickers?

There will still be a place for all those activities, said Art Eck, the recreation area’s superintendent. The plan is a framework for future use, Eck said, not a blueprint for individual sites and trails. Decisions on which trails to close or reroute will follow over the next few years, as the Park Service devises a separate scheme for the 769 miles of trails wending through the recreation area.

“I think they’re on the right track,” said Milt McAuley, a well-known hiker and the author of seven trail guides to the mountains. “I look at it two different ways: I want to go hiking, but the trail does not help the environment. . . . And the environment is more important than anything else.”

The plan’s authority is limited, because more than half of the recreation area is privately owned. Two decades ago the National Park Service intended to buy 35,000 acres here within five years, but uneven federal funding and soaring land prices slowed the acquisition effort.

The Park Service holds about 22,000 acres--14% of the overall area--and the state (including the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy) owns about 26%. Although the new plan sketches a vision for the entire area, it cannot dictate use for private parcels. It merely prescribes how land should be used after it is acquired by a public agency.

“For much of the area, the hiking experience will be the Santa Monica Mountains experience,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills), who as a state legislator in the late 1970s led the movement to create the mountains conservancy. “I think it’s a very good plan.”

More Than 100 Testify at Hearings

Public reaction has been largely positive--”which was kind of shocking to us because we expected more controversy,” Anderson conceded. More than 100 people testified during public hearings in February.

“I think it’s a good balance between preservation and access,” said Rich Ambrose, a mountain biker who lives in Agoura Hills, according to a transcript. “I’m pleased to see that mountain biking will be allowed on the designated trails in the low-intensity areas.”

Others objected that the plan does not allow for enough recreation. “I don’t believe a plan which locks up these public lands as a preserve, as a ‘do not touch’ area . . . is really what the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area was formed to be,” said Don Schmitz, a resident who testified at a Malibu hearing.

Park officials said their aim is not to cordon off the mountains, but to encourage people and nature to coexist in a way that benefits both. “We’re not trying to make decisions about whether people should be in the Santa Monica Mountains or not,” Eck said. “They already are, and in fact the challenge is figuring out how to harmonize that [with natural resources], because they will always be part of the landscape.”