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