Author: Eric Edmunds

We were scheduled to meet in January, and as usual, I penned a “Message from the Chair” in anticipation of the meeting. It was cheery and positive and upbeat, and discussed the fact L.A. is the only major city in the world bisected by a mountain range.

On the morning of January 7th, I was meeting with a client in his brand-new house in Pacific Palisades. About 11 AM, an assistant ran in and told us there was an evacuation order and we had to get out, fast. We stopped the meeting, got in our cars, and took off. I looked left up to the intersection of Sunset and Bienveneda, saw cops with lightbars flashing directing cars west – which turned out to be into the fire. On an instinct, knowing the rabbit-warren of streets there as I do, I turned south (away from the intersection) and navigated my out of the Palisades and got home. I escaped. I was also the last person to see the client’s beautiful new multimillion-dollar house, which burned to the ground.

But later in the afternoon came the evacuation order for Mandeville Canyon. We had to hastily pack up pets, important papers and a few clothes. I wasn’t particularly concerned: we’ve had evacuations before, and they typically last a day and a night, two at the most. This time it was 12 days, camping out with our daughter, son-in-law, and three grandbabies (delighted by a long sleepover with grandma and grandpa).

No longer at home, we watched the action remotely from our Ring cameras (until power was cut off). From our front and rear cameras we watched a huge pillar of black smoke marching toward our neighborhood on the west ridge of Mandeville Canyon (“Brentwood Hills”). We also saw a cloud of black smoke in Sullivan Canyon, next door to Mandeville. The last thing we saw, before the power and the cameras failed, were firemen swarming across our backyard and deck, running hoses out to the big ravine below our deck.

As the fire approached Mandeville, the firefighters mounted a massive Defend the Alamo attack on the fire, with helicopters dumping water and jumbo jets dropping retardant. The first indication our house was still there was not until Saturday, four days later, as ABC interrupted Good Morning America to show live aerial coverage of our street and our house, intact, on ABC7. We watched the jumbo jets and helicopters bombing the fire, which they stopped from spreading into our canyon. No homes in Brentwood Hills were lost.

Most of our friends live in the Palisades, and most lost their homes. The staggering degree of the loss caused by this disaster is difficult to exaggerate. Although police are not letting outsiders in, the Palisades today looks like a war zone. Almost everything in the Village area is gone, including two supermarkets, the library and rec center, the Catholic church, and several schools. Palisades High School, while it didn’t burn down, is damaged and unusable. Several other schools as well.

More to the point of our organization, the Santa Monica Mountains have suffered a severe blow. Many trails we enjoy are closed, including the Westridge Fire Road above my house, the Sullivan Canyon and Sullivan Ridge Trails, Rustic Canyon, and the Kenter-Canyonback Fire Road from Kenter up to dirt Mulholland. The fire is believed to have started at the Skull Rock formation on the popular Temescal Ridge trail, which of course is closed.

I haven’t said anything about the Eaton Fire, which also started in a beautiful ecological preserve above Pasadena and wiped out much of Altadena. Those are the San Gabriels, outside our jurisdiction.

Combined with the shocking political developments underway in our country, 2025 is off to an overwhelming, discombobulating and gloomy beginning. For environmentalists, the new administration’s neutering and dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), established by Richard Nixon in the 1970s, is alarming. And that’s just a small piece of the coming attack on the environment, and aggressive attempt to unwind everything accomplished over the last several decades.

The national Sierra Club is mounting a massive and expensive fight against all this, and we need to support that. For our Task Force, plenty of trail work and remediation lies in our future.

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

Our slogan at the Sierra Club is “explore, enjoy and protect the planet.” For me, a big part of that involves animals and their own “enjoyment and protection.” Lord knows, right now they depend on us for protection.

As your Chair of the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force, I am an unapologetic tree-hugger and animal-lover. And there’s a lot of animals in the Santa Monica Mountains.

For many years, I have traveled around the world seeing animals in their natural environments. I have gone on numerous safaris to see lions, leopards, elephants, cape buffalo, zebras, giraffes and many others in their homes in East and Southern Africa. (I call it a “reverse zoo”: we humans are caged inside Land Rovers and safari vehicles, while the animals can go wherever they want.) I’ve tracked silverback gorillas in the jungles of Central Africa. Bird life, including red and blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos, and the iguanas and giant land tortoises there. Scuba-dived with bull sharks in Fiji, and great whites off Cape Town. I’ve witnessed the annual October migration of polar bears onto the sea ice of Hudson Bay, which was amazing and occurred before climate change had thinned out their population. Tigers in India and Thailand. Wolves, moose and grizzly bears in Denali National Park in Alaska.

Closer to home, we have four rescue Siamese cats, and I am “grandpa” to a feisty poodle mutt. So yes, I’m an animal-lover. And I live on the cusp between urban civilization and the “Great Wild” wilderness. My backyard sees coyotes, rattlesnakes, and very occasionally, mountain lions.

These animals have been in the news lately. We all know about P-22, the mountain lion hero of Griffith Park. For the first time, black bears are showing up in the Santa Monica Mountains (though tragically, the most recent one was struck and killed on the 101). Wolves have been seen migrating south from Oregon and the Rockies into NorCal—one got as far south as the Grapevine before being hit by a car. A litter of cougar cubs was just discovered in our mountains, despite the sickening number of cougars killed on our roads. The Annenberg Overpass over the 101 in Agoura, which this Task Force politically supported and contributed to financially, will hopefully help remediate that. Raptors, too: two peregrine falcons just had babies atop the Campanille Tower in Berkeley. Sadly, yesterday we just lost a highly publicized red-tailed hawk baby, which had been kidnapped and adopted by bald eagles.

At this Task Force, we have three major jobs: creating and maintaining many miles of hiking trails in the Santa Monica Mountains; organizing hikes of different levels and lengths to expose as many Sierra-Clubbers as possible to the beauty, majesty and wildlife of the Santa Monica Mountains; and political and legal activism to preserve the mountains from development and other threats, something we have accomplished in the courts, city hall and State Capitol.

I am proud and privileged to Chair this Task Force, and to work indefatigably toward those goals.

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

Requiescant in pace, P-22.

A lot has been written about the late P-22, eloquently, and I can’t presume to add to that here. I do think public consciousness about pumas in the Santa Monica Mountains has increased exponentially in the last few weeks, and years. On February 4th there was a sold-out celebration of life at the Greek Theatre. The day prior, Congressman Adam Schiff (now running for Senator) formally requested the Postal Service to issue a stamp in P-22’s honor. February 4th’s L.A. Times featured a front-page, above-the-fold story headlined “Big Cats Suffer an Alarming Rate of Roadkills.” P-22, of course, was hit by a car before he had to be euthanized.

I have long been fascinated by mountain lions. They are among the most elusive creatures in the mountains you will ever (or never) see. In 46 years of trail-running and hiking, I have had only one encounter, if you can call it that. I was on an obscure trail in the Palisades Highlands, running down towards the coast, and 20 yards or so in front of me what looked like a dog-sized coyote emerged from the brush and trotted away. Except it didn’t have a furry bushy tail, it was a tubular tail. At once I realized this was no coyote. Whoa! I was taken aback!

Years ago, this Task Force made one of the first financial contributions to what is now the Wallis Annenberg Overpass on the 101 Freeway by Liberty Canyon. One of the first contributions. Let us hope and pray that, when completed, this will enable pumas, and other critters, to mix with genetic partners all the way up through the Los Padres National Forest, and promote the diversity of these endangered animals.

P-22 famously crossed two freeways, the 405 and the 101, to make it into Griffith Park, where it seems he had the whole turf to himself. And he was equally famously photographed with the Hollywood Sign in the background. Most are not so fortunate. When I open the morning paper and read about yet another puma-strike on one of our highways, I inwardly groan. Scientists say that if this trajectory doesn’t change, pumas may be extinct in these mountains in 50 years.

Someone once told the 1930s humorist Will Rogers that animals have no (human) “soul” and therefore cannot go to heaven. His response: “Well, I guess if animals can’t go to heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they go.”

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

At our August 2022 meeting, there was big news to report. Most of you know that years ago, the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force was the sole party to step up and sue The Edge (guitarist for the band U2) over his proposed five-mansion project in Sweetwater Mesa, Malibu, overlooking the Malibu Pier. It had been green-lighted by the Coastal Commission, so they were a party to the case, too. In a surprising turn of events, the Task Force won a victory in the California Court of Appeal which found the project had been improperly permitted.

There are some rich-and-famous folks who never hear the word “no”. The Edge pressed on and refused to sell the land (pristine ESHA) to an agency — despite a column from L.A. Times pundit Steve Lopez urging him to do so. Well, apparently, that has just changed, and The Edge has approached the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Price and terms remain to be negotiated, but the fact he is now knocking on the door is encouraging. We have been asked to write letters in support of an acquisition. This happens to be a good time for the availability of State money.

Speaking of politics, we’re barreling toward a big election in November. Big for the environment, that is. Candidates of all stripes are running for an array of offices that affect the Santa Monica Mountains. Longtime staunch environmental activist Sheila Kuhl is termed out on the County Board of Supervisors, District 3, which includes a large chunk of the mountains (including The Edge’s property). Two candidates are running to replace her, one of whom, West Hollywood Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath, was our guest speaker earlier this month. L.A. City Council races in play include Districts 11, 4 and 5, which span big swaths of the mountains and hills. The politicians elected to these offices will be making, or influencing, many land-use decisions about development, fire policy, density and mansion-ization, among other things.

The Angeles Chapter has a “Political Committee” whose job it is to vet candidates for every office. As it happens, two Task Force members sit on that committee. Make sure you vote this month!

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

One fun fact, little-known by many Angelenos, is that Los Angeles is the only major city in the world bisected by a mountain range. That would be the Santa Monica Mountains… the raison d’etre of this Task Force. It rises in Griffith Park and Hollywood Bowl in the east, and stretches to Point Mugu Rock on the Pacific Ocean in Ventura County, on the west. These mountains, straddling approximately Mulholland Drive/Highway, separate the San Fernando Valley from the “Westside,” and the Verdugo Mountains and San Gabriel Valley from the heart of the city. Along with other agencies, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency, is the curator and protector of this asset and legacy.

The crown jewel of the Santa Monica Mountains is the Backbone Trail, running along the spine of the mountains from Will Rogers’ house in Pacific Palisades to Point Mugu, about 67 miles in length. A few years ago, the last sections of this trail in private ownership were conveyed to the County or Conservancy, meaning that today this resource is secure for generations of our posterity. Some years ago, when I was younger and fitter and nimbler than today, I through-ran the entire length of the Backbone Trail in 21 hours. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Most hikers take about a week to complete the trek.

These mountains are constantly under threat from spec-developers seeking to grade, build, and develop in what is now open space wilderness. The mountains, in turn, are subject to jurisdiction by a patchwork quilt of public agencies and political entities. These include the City of Los Angeles, the County of Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, National Park Service, California State Parks, Coastal Commission, and other agencies. If your mission is to look out for the mountains, and to seek, protect and enlarge them, that’s a lot of politicians to keep track of.

As you may have noticed from what is filling your mailbox, we’re now in the middle of “Election Season.” The first big primaries are coming up on June 7, with run-offs in November. Like I said, that’s a lot of politicians to keep track of. Those folks will be deciding what development shall be allowed, versus what pristine acreage will be acquired and put up for public use.

The Sierra Club is bureaucratized, and has a “Political Committee” devoted to evaluating and endorsing candidates for national, state and local public office. I’m not on it, thankfully, but two of our members are. It would be improper for me to issue personal endorsements, but I can tell you of some of the key races.

The sprawling, massive City of Los Angeles (population 4 million, second-largest in the country) is divided into 15 districts, each represented by a member of the City Council. By comparison, the state of Wyoming has about half a million people. Three of these 15 districts are highly relevant to the Santa Monica Mountains: 4, 5 and 11.

Mike Bonin, the controversial councilperson for District 11 — including Brentwood and Palisades up to the Valley — is stepping down, and will not run for re-election. That vacuum is being filled by about 8 candidates, each with their own views about development, the environment, building housing for the un-housed potentially in open space, fire danger, and expansion of public wilderness open space. I happen to live in District 11, and have been invited to fundraisers, meet-and-greets, and candidate debates. And I’ve been attending, meeting the candidates and questioning them.

The County of Los Angeles is much bigger than the City. With a population over 10 million, over 4,000 square miles, and with 88 incorporated cities, it’s home to more than one-quarter of all Californians. The County has jurisdiction over a huge section of the Santa Monica Mountains, and is governed by a five-member Board of Supervisors, dubbed the “Five Little Kings.” Each of these “kings” commands more governing and financial power ($35 billion total) than the Governors of most states. The race to watch is Supervisorial District 3, which includes most of the mountains. Four candidates are leading: State Senators Henry Stern and Bob Hertzberg, West Hollywood City Councilmember Lindsey Horvath, and small business owner Jeffi Girgenti.

Rob Bonta, California’s Attorney General, is also up for re-election, and is opposed by several candidates. The Attorney General is critical in enforcing environmental protections throughout the state, and represents state agencies like the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, State Parks, and Coastal Commission. All of which are hugely critical to the preservation of our mountains.

Finally, the Mayor’s race for the City of Los Angeles has attracted lots of attention and press. The two leading candidates are billionaire developer Rick Caruso and Congresswoman Karen Bass, representing the 37th congressional district in Washington. Two other candidates, City Attorney Mike Feuer and City Councilman Kevin DeLeon, representing the 14th District, lag far behind. Last week I attended a meeting of community leaders from the Valley and Westside interviewing Karen Bass.

So there’s a lot percolating in the pot right now, and Yours Truly is struggling to stay on top of it all. Regardless — please vote on June 7!

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

Happy New Year! As I write this, it’s raining… I’m delighted to say. This, plus the big rains we had at year’s end, are hopefully a first step to us digging out of our deep hole from drought and climate change. Soon, the Santa Monica Mountains will be greening up, and hikers and trail-runners can enjoy verdant vistas and a new crop of wildflowers.

Recently, those mountains got a big boost in court, as well. Following a hard-fought, one-month trial in Santa Monica Superior Court, attended virtually by several members of the Task Force, the Judge ruled that residents of a small enclave in Malibu called Sycamore Park have no right to bar access by hikers and the public from using their community to access trails in Escondido Canyon Park.

One defendant in the case was the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA), a public agency who owns a parcel of land in the enclave. It lies next to an important trailhead leading to Escondido Falls, the largest falls in the Santa Monicas. Not surprisingly, this trail, and trail-system, are very popular. But in 2015, a handful of Sycamore Park homeowners got together and took it upon themselves to put up “No Trespassing” signs and hire a security guard to keep hikers and the public away from Via Escondido Drive. Not content with that, they sued MRCA (itself a holder of property easement rights on Via Escondido) alleging it had no right to invite in the public.

After hearing from dozens of witnesses and examining dozens of old property deeds, the Court disagreed. Famed hiking expert and author John McKinney testified as an expert witness for us. The Court is about to order the residents to remove their signage, including signs misdirecting hikers to a different trailhead a mile west on Pacific Coast Highway. It will likely order that the security guard can no longer keep the public out of Via Escondido.

MRCA was represented as counsel of record in the case by your Chair. This reminds us again that the Sierra Club Santa Monica Mountains Task Force is a trident with three prongs: trail-building and maintenance by our wonderful volunteers; leading of hikes and outings, to familiarize as many as possible with the trails, panoramas, and wonders of the mountains; and finally, activism in the political and legal arenas.

The Sycamore Park case is not over. Now that the court’s 16-page, single-spaced Statement of Decision has been made (as of January 17th), the trial enters Phase Two. MRCA will sue for money damages over the security guard’s wrongful exclusion of its rangers and agency employees, and deprivation of access to its property. After that, there will probably be an appeal.

But for the moment, there is much to celebrate. The last time we had this much joy was two years ago, when the Task Force went to court and single-handedly stopped wealthy U2 guitarist “The Edge” from grading pristine and protected wilderness above the Malibu Pier in order to build five mansions.

It’s a war that never ends, folks. Constantly, we need courage and stomach for battle. Again, Happy New Year to all. And hope to see you at our next Zoom meeting on February 7th!

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force 

Happy Summer, Sierra Clubbers! And Santa Monica Mountains Task Force members and contributors.

My editors asked me for a more positive and upbeat report this time. Sometimes that’s hard, as we look at the dismal and accelerating effects of climate change, drought and heat, particularly in the Santa Monicas. It’s only June, and already we’ve had weather and heat events that didn’t used to be seen until August and September. The fire season is at our doorstep, and the first one (arson) already hit the Palisades Highlands — 1,200 acres burned in beautiful Santa Ynez and Trailer Canyons, in May.

But the good news is that the Club, which has been in lockdown mode for well over a year, is emerging from the cave. Vaccinations have changed everything. Now you don’t see anyone, or hardly anyone, wearing facemasks on the trails and fire roads.

Once the intense summer heat is past, our Trail Crew will resume its work, maintaining trails throughout the mountains. Kudos to crew leaders Rachel Glegg and Bill Vanderberg. Thanks to social media and other outreach efforts, we’ve attracted a huge influx of new blood, honoring our patriarch, founder and godfather Ron Webster, who passed away at the beginning of the year after an amazing life preserving the mountains.

Also resuming this month is our Outings program, under the auspices of Howard Strauss and David Finch. Everyone, from tiger hikers to first-timers, is welcome. I know we’re all itching to get out and hit the trails again. 

Meanwhile, our political and legal activism got no time off during the pandemic. We’re firing on all cylinders against the many threats by developers — and even government bureaucrats — to damage the mountains. We’ve got our hands full, even after winning an epic legal victory in the Court of Appeal against a noxious development in Malibu in 2019.

If any of this interests you, please join our next Zoom meeting on August 2nd. Welcome to the Task Force!

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

It’s early spring. The weather suddenly has turned warm. It was 80 degrees today, and is expected to get warmer in the coming week. (Climate change? Hello?)

The climb in temps has brought a climb in discourtesy. People are emerging from their COVID bubbles intent on catching up on lost time. The day I wrote this, March 28th, 2021, the beaches were packed and Pacific Coast Highway a parking lot northbound. The hiking trails are covered with people, large groups, young and unmasked, no social distancing — even though the epidemic is surging among young unmasked people. Older folks who have received both our shots, like me, are luckier. The young’uns don’t seem to have gotten the memo.

Today, in the space of two minutes, three people cut me off in traffic, including one who blocked the intersection of Ocean and California, when I had the green light. He didn’t budge. If a cop had been around, he would be appearing on my Traffic Court calendar in Santa Monica Superior Court. People are street-racing on surface boulevards as never before, including car-rallies on Sunset and other thoroughfares. The L.A. Times has been reporting on this discourtesy, with its lethal results. Today and yesterday, motorcyclists were killed, one colliding with a tree, speeding, in Pacific Palisades.

This extends to the mountains and the trails. Which are now packed with people (not in itself bad). When people approach, you just raise your mask or bandana, look the other way and move as far to the other side as is convenient. 

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Mountain bikes are another matter. When you’re on a wide fire road, it’s not a big deal. You just get out of their way, and have a little less time to raise your mask as they whiz by. Most bikers aren’t masked. 

But on a single-track trail, it’s a different story. Single-track trails are narrow, obviously. In my humble opinion, bikes don’t belong on single-track trails in the mountains. They belong on fire roads. We lost a skirmish in that battle about 10 years ago when State Parks opened up the Backbone Trail to bikes. 

Most mountain bikers are courteous and respectful of other trail users. The problem is the outlaw shredders. Not long ago, I was almost killed on the very steep Meteor Point trail connecting Sullivan Canyon up to the Westridge Fire Road. I was making my way up the twisty, steep trail, when a shredder burst over the top of a hill above me, clearly unable to brake or stop, headed straight at me. I froze, panicked, then leaped into the brush just in time to avoid getting run over. I screamed profanities but he didn’t slow down, just cussed at me for being in his way. 

Had he hit and killed me — which he almost did — there was no way he could have slowed down or stopped, or climbed back up the steep hill to where my body was. He didn’t give a shit, he was on a thrill ride. I would have become carrion for the coyotes and hawks before any humans came down this lightly-used trail and found me.

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 Electric bicycles are another threat. And it’s growing. These machines require little to no physical effort to power on the part of the user. The bike just powers up the trail. Once upon a time, I ran up a hill at about the same speed as a mountain biker. No more. Now I may get run over. And I’m seeing more and more of them on the trails and fire roads, with their wide heavy treads.

That is the discourtesy problem I’m preaching about from this (such as it is) pulpit. And it’s only going to get worse, as temps warm and more people come out of their bubbles and hit the trail.

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Speaking of the Backbone Trail, in this issue we have a memorial to the founder and patriarch of our trail crew, Ron Webster. I’ll miss him greatly.

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

One of the things I’ve learned in 30 years as an environmentalist fighting legal and political battles to save and preserve wilderness open space in the Santa Monica Mountains is, there are no permanent victories.

Just when you think you have achieved something final and forever, ten or twenty years later, the beast re-awakens and roars back to life. A wealthy developer or builder, eyeing a jewel of a parcel of pristine open space, armed with seasoned high-priced lawyers from the city’s premier land-use firms, makes a move.

This can be depressing and discouraging, but requires us as environmental activists to remain vigilant, intrepid, determined, and ready to keep fighting.

That is where we find ourselves today with the so-called Berggruen Institute in the Sepulveda Pass in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Last week (as I write this) was the official City of Los Angeles “Scoping Meeting,” the first step in entitling this massive project under the City’s codes and process, and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

You can learn more about this project here at www.protectourwildlands.org

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Swiss billionaire Nicolas Berggruen is currently planning to build a vanity project “think tank” supposedly dedicated to “advancing good governance and environmental stewardship” on the 447 acres of open space in the former Mission Canyon landfill area of the mountains. The area in question spans from upper Mandeville Canyon to Mountaingate and consists of two ridges: Ridge 2 above Mandeville Canyon, and another north of Mountaingate and south to Mount Saint Mary’s College (Ridge 1, Stoney Hill Ridge). More than 420 acres of this land is protected open space, including the heavily trafficked Canyonback Trail and Mount Saint Mary’s Fire Road, outdoor treasures which the surrounding communities have fought long and hard to protect.

According to agreements between Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) — a government agency, and the former owners of Berggruen’s property — much of the area currently being discussed for development cannot be developed. In 2017 their plans showed serious encroachments into protected land. These protected areas do not belong to a developer, but rather belong to the people of California, held in trust for future generations. This precious wilderness houses native plants, coyotes, great horned owl, quail, deer, mountain lions, etc. Overdevelopment of these lands presents significant other immediate risks to the community — from fire hazards and higher traffic to increased noise and light pollution.

Berggruen’s goal is to rival, in regal splendor, the Getty Museum to the south (J. Paul Getty) and the Skirball Center to the north. Except those institutions are open to the public, but Berggruen’s private “think tank” will not be. It will impact important trails used by hikers and the public, including the Mount Saint Mary’s Fire Road from the college up to Mountaingate, and also the epic Riordan Trail linking that fire road down into Bundy Canyon (a beautiful riparian Oak and Sycamore-studded canyon) and up the other side to Canyonback Road. Creation of the Riordan Trail was an important Sierra Club victory ten years ago, for which I as your Chair was honored ten years ago.

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Importantly, Berggruen has no right to build this project. It may violate numerous easements, including a Conservation Easement held by the MRCA, and City codes and regulations. Berggruen’s answer to that is for his lawyers to propose to change the rules, enact an unprecedented amendment to the City’s General Plan, and ask for zoning variances and other deviations from the Building Code, and the Baseline Hillside Ordinance. The MRCA hired counsel to vigorously defend the public easement, and the neighboring Mountaingate community has won the first important skirmish in their lawsuit against him. 

But when you’re a billionaire, nothing is too much to ask for: you never hear the word “no.” The world is your oyster.

Speaking of the world, Berggruen has built vanity projects allegedly dedicated to “good governance” all over the world. According to reporting, his normal modus operandi is allegedly to make “gifts” and contributions to whatever local officials need to approve his projects.

As anyone knows who has been reading the newspapers lately, local officials in Los Angeles who have taken large contributions from developers are disgraced or pleading guilty to bribery and corruption, including former Councilmembers Jose Huizar and Mitch Englander, and a former deputy mayor and the head of Building and Safety. But Berggruen has feathered his nest with many elected officials who support his goals of “good government,” democracy and reexamining capitalism. And who, incidentally, would like a splashy prestige project to go up in their district.

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We fought this battle 15 years ago. The prior owner of the property, developer Castle & Cooke (who built Mountaingate) sought permits from the City to build 29 luxury homes on the subject property. But that would have entailed cutting off the Mount Saint Mary’s Fire Road and other hikers’ access to this portion of the mountains. We sued to protect those rights, and after intense litigation, achieved a City-brokered settlement that protected 95 percent of the land as a public Conservation Easement, protected or preserved historic Canyonback Trail, and created a new hiking trail down into Bundy Canyon, and a new trail, and up the other side. Victory achieved! Or so we thought.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, no victories are permanent in the Santa Monica Mountains. Constant vigilance, intrepidness and stomach for battle are required. That’s where we are now, folks.

Fortunately, the Sierra Club is part of a great coalition of activists, environmental land-use lawyers, organizations and HOAs opposed to this project and dedicated to fight. Stay tuned for updates about the City’s land-use and CEQA process. We’ll keep you informed. 

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force

As we know, all too well and bitterly, Fire Season is upon us. Although it’s barely begun, catastrophic wildfires have consumed not just California, but huge swaths of the coastal and inter-mountain West. Oregon and Washington just burned, losing many homes. Colorado is on fire, and they say won’t be out of danger until the first snows in October.

Two hundred hikers and campers in the Sierras barely escaped the Creek Fire with their lives, and then only because Chinook helicopters dangerously flew into thick smoke and airlifted them out. As I began writing this on 9/10, the morning’s Los Angeles Times showed the San Francisco skyline as an orange, smoky apocalypse. Although the Santa Monica Mountains have mostly not been stricken (yet), the Bobcat Fire in the San Gabriels, including Mount Wilson and Big Santa Anita Canyon — a hiker’s paradise — has scorched more than 115,000 acres and is still not fully contained. For a time, the thick smoke and poisonous air it dumped into the Los Angeles basin rendered any hiking, trail-running or outdoor exercise hazardous to your health.

For most of my 45 years living in L.A., fire season meant three months or so of the year centered around October. Now it’s 12 months a year. The Thomas Fire, which devastated the Santa Monicas and Los Padres National Forest, started in December of 2017 and took three months to put out, and then only because of the arrival of rains. I’d never heard of fire tornadoes before now, creating their own weather with flames 100 to 200 feet high, exhausting fire-fighters volunteering from all over the world, but welcome to the New Normal. The destruction caused by drought, and beetles, has killed thousands of square miles of California forests, making them tinder for the ravenous fires, especially around Yosemite and Lake Tahoe.

The Santa Monicas are America’s largest and only intra-urban mountain range. As we sit here today, the truly scary Santa Ana “devil winds” are still ahead. Remember the quaint old times when building a fire-break protected against the spread of a wildfire? Already all MRCA trails in the Santa Monicas, and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, have been closed twice: the first, in April, because of COVID-19 overcrowding and people’s non-compliance with masks and social-distancing protocols; and the second, over Labor Day, because of the lethal heat wave that killed a 41-year-old female hiker in Tapia Park, near Calabasas. That day, Los Angeles County set an all-time record of 121 degrees. Many others had to be rescued and medevacked out. That’s also when the Bobcat Fire started in the San Gabriels.

So what, if anything, is the Sierra Club doing about all this? Your Chair has been busy. In August I spent a full day with a team of City of L.A. engineers, fire department officials and engineers including the Fire Chief, the head Ranger and the Deputy Director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, as well as community and homeowner-association leaders, to scout out locations for a new series of fire cameras throughout the Santa Monica Mountains. 

This exciting project — stretching across all of California, not just here — is being funded by public and private charitable money based out of U.C. San Diego. We surveyed a dozen or more locations, such as San Vicente Mountain Peak (Nike missile tracking station), Mountaingate, and the Green Mountain radar navigation station on the Temescal Ridge Fire Road, looking for the most panoramic, unobstructed and long-range views of the mountains. These cameras will be rolling 24/7, in real time, and accessible not just to the fire department but to everyone via the Internet. We know that early detection and extinguishment of these fires, which seem to start in the middle of the night or early morning, is critical. The fire department is enthusiastic, and says these cameras will allow them to detect fires and deploy resources earlier and with greater precision, when the fire can still be knocked down.

We’re also active on the legislative front. Recent legislation in Sacramento aggressively sought to “densify” housing across the state, effectively abolishing single-family zoning (among other companion legislation, SB 1120). Whatever you might think about this on the merits, as regards homelessness and the housing crisis, this legislation — which failed to pass in the closing minutes of the Assembly session — could be disastrous for the mountains. Most of these locations are known as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. Attracting developers to buy land here, clear wilderness open-space and build dense and expensive (not affordable) housing, will be a grave and deadly mistake. Many of these new residences could be difficult or impossible to evacuate in a firestorm, as we tragically saw in Northern California.

That is why, on August 22nd, Sierra Club California passed a resolution opposing new building in Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, except for existing in-fill development, “to respond to increasing intensity and frequency of devastating wildfires on lives, habitat, property, infrastructure, and the environment.”

Stay tuned. This is all “breaking news.”

Eric Edmunds, Chair
Santa Monica Mountains Task Force