Peter Huck looks at a revolutionary project that aims to protect wildlife in the face of rapid human population growth
Peter Huck
Wednesday May 26, 2004

The Guardian

The news that a mountain lion had been spotted in Griffith Park, a rugged 4,100-acre reserve most famous for the Hollywood sign, came as a surprise to Los Angeles. The park, America's largest urban wilderness, is marooned amid suburbs and freeways. It was a little like Londoners hearing that a lion had been glimpsed stalking the deer in Richmond Park.

"I expect it'll find its way out in a couple of weeks, or die trying," says biologist Paul Brier. "The park is too small for a lion. It would be like me living in a telephone booth."

Still, the lion's presence in the park is proof of the species' proclivity to wander. Brier surmises that it is most likely a young male, searching for territory. Its ability to navigate the urban jungle -either along Mulholland Drive, or via the San Fernando valley's drainage canals, now dry -is heartening news for environmentalists, who are creating a network of wildlife linkages throughout densely-settled southern California.

The linkages concept emerged in the 1960s, but became a reality in 1991, when US activists and scientists launched the Wildlands Project. Fearing that existing parks and wildernesses were becoming "islands," in which shrinking gene pools would doom many species to extinction, it proposed linking wild lands with corridors. This would allow animals to roam -to find new territory, breeding partners, food supplies, or to adapt to changing weather and climate -while giving them more leeway to respond to natural processes, such as wildfires that temporarily destroy a habitat. This grand vision of an epic archipelago of wild lands might also help a wider public connect to nature.

The steadily unfolding scheme envisages "mega" corridors linking wilderness areas throughout Canada, the US, and Central America. Smaller links will join wild lands within some 25 regions, such as the one in southern California.

With just $750,000 (£418,600) in its 2004 budget, the Wildlands Project doesn't intend to enact this vision alone. "We've always sought leverage to influence other conservation groups," explains David Johns, board president of the project.

The vision is being implemented by dozens of regional groups, each adding a piece to the overall jigsaw. While politicians and the public have yet to grasp the wildlands concept -Johns says most people erroneously believe "postage-sized" parks will protect biodiversity -it is being absorbed by county, state and federal officials.

Southern California poses major challenges to the project. America's second largest urban region, with more than 20 million people and rapid development, is also one of the planet's richest biodiversities. As the Griffith Park lion illustrates, wildlife encounters -the coyotes in suburban streets, the rattlesnake on a walking trail, the raccoons pillaging dustbins, the bear in the backyard on the edge of the megalopolis -are common.

But for how long? The region is one of 25 global "hot spots," with hundreds of imperilled species. In an interconnected ecosystem pyramid, where species balance is vital to survival, lions sit at the apex. If lions vanish, deer -the main food source for lions -may overgraze habitats, triggering a disastrous chain reaction.

Kristeen Penrod, who runs the South Coast Wildlands Project, has spent the last year working with activists and government agencies to promote the San Gabriel-Castaic linkage, designed to connect the Angeles and Los Padres national forests north of Los Angeles, as a pilot project for the government's Natural Communities Conservation Plan. "We're involved in a five-county scheme that identifies hot spots of species diversity," she says. "The idea is to set aside some areas for conservation and others for development."

Such horse-trading is vital to the success of the project. For instance, farmers in Costa Rica, part of the fledgling Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, are paid not to fell rainforest for cattle ranching. Other corridors are being set up in South Africa, Australia and the Far East.

As the planet faces mass extinction and climate change, the Wildland project will let creatures move to higher latitudes. The scheme is emerging as an eleventh-hour Noah's Ark: "It's a race between those who are trying to save what's left of wildlife, and the rate of growth of human population," says Reed Noss, the project's science chief.

The Wildlands Project: www.twp.org

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