Coastal Restoration

We discussed this both last night and the previous night at various public and scientific meetings I attended.  This is both sad and hopeful; sad that this critter and his genetic "refresh" was lost...but hopeful in that there is an ability for critters from one part of our fragmented coastal landscape to get our Santa Monica Mountains region IF we can get better crossing structures built.  The Libery crossing is the most high profile.  We need many, many more crossing points.

One of my colleagues who was at this meeting a decade ago in South Africa Commented:

"The plenum of the World Parks Congress in 2003 in Durban had several thousand delegates pushing, shouting, and agitating—as park people do---until the hall went silent and the spot light fell upon President Mandela.

The electricity in that chamber would set your hair on end. To hear him speak of peace, justice, the end of apartheid, all these things one would expect, but instead to hear him say that the highest goal of mankind should be to preserve nature was, coming from this man, nothing short of transformative."

A nice overview of how Protected Areas were created in California and how they have come to be an essential part of our coastal state's character and identity.