Introduction

This blog specifically addresses the need for wildlife corridors between the Santa Monica Mountains, the Santa Susana Mountains and the Eastern San Gabriel range. Due to residential development and transportation hazards such as freeways, these critical and rare pieces of chaparral habitat have decreasing opportunities for biodiversity in wildlife due to the lack of connectivity between different populations of animals. In order to address this future decline in wildlife population, wildlife corridors need to be implemented around the rim of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Santa Susana Mountains and the Eastern San Gabriel Mountains, frequently being referred now as the Rim of the Valley. Our research will focus on 5 areas of study within the Rim of the Valley’s mountainous areas; Conejo Grade via US Highway 101, Calabasas Hills via US Highway 101, Newhall Pass via Interstate 5, Santa Susanna Pass, and the Sepulveda Pass via Interstate 405.  

 We propose that these locations are the optimal places to develop corridors based on the greatest ability to connect the most amount of intact habitat. We will select the wildlife corridor locations based upon the type and quantity of vegetation juxtaposed against the vertical relief. This is based on the concept that wildlife are more likely to use familiar vegetation for food and shelter and that land value increase as relief is lessened and that it will be more cost effective to place the corridors in low land value areas.. Furthermore, several of the geographical locations include problematic urban factors such as freeways and private property that need to be addressed in relation to wildlife survival . The local media of Ventura County and Los Angeles County are aware of the growing threat to wildlife due to habitat loss and lack of wildlife corridors in the surrounding wilderness areas and as a consequence several articles involving wildlife accidents have arisen recently.

Partially due to the public interest in the subject, we will attempt to correlate recent articles involving wildlife death with our current research through ArcGIS, focusing on the apex predator in the region, the mountain lion. As recent research continues to show, the health of a habitat can be and usually is directly affected by the health of the apex predator in the region and therefore understanding the movements of mountain lions can be paramount to our research. We will be using remote sensed images from the United States Geological Survey to identify landscape limitations and corridor placements based upon the known location of the Liberty Canyon Wildlife Corridor being implemented in the Calabasas study area. These images will be supplemented by field interpretations with personal knowledge and high oblique photographs , data from National Park Online Archives and Google Earth high resolution imagery for comparison.  The results will show where wildlife corridors should be implemented for future protection of wildlife and the ecosystems of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Santa Susana Mountains and the Eastern San Gabriel Mountains making up the Rim of the Valley Conservation Area.