The Coal Canyon Story

At the juncture of 4 of Southern California's most rapidly growing counties lies a transverse hillside system known as the Puente-Chino Hills. Local lore holds that treasure still lies buried in these hills, but the real treasure lies above ground along the streams and in the oak and walnut woodlands.

These hills are an extension of the Santa Ana Mountains, separated from them by the Santa Ana River and the Whittier and Chino earthquake faults in the Elsinore Fault Zone. The hills are bounded by the 605 freeway on the west in Whittier, the 60 freeway to the north in southeastern Los Angeles County, the 71 freeway on the east in the city of Chino Hills in San Bernardino County, and the 91 freeway on the south in Riverside and Orange Counties. The hills are virtually an island in a sea of urbanization.

Oil was discovered here in 1880, leading to an array of oil companies purchasing large parcels of land hoping to exploit the resource. Many of the oil fields are now depleted, but a century's worth of extraction kept housing developments at bay (Keating 2006).

Despite the real estate boom and the now 18 million inhabitants, the hills remained relatively undeveloped, thereby providing an opportunity for area residents to organize to protect them. Efforts began in the mid 1970s to establish Chino Hills State Park (CHSP) on the eastern side of the hills. Today CHSP protects over 5,706 ha of oak and walnut woodlands, grasslands, chaparral, and coastal sage scrub. As part of the California Floristic province, the area is considered a "Hot Spot of Biodiversity" (Conservation International 2012).

Figure 1.

The Coal Canyon Corridor connects Chino Hills State Park to the southern Santa Ana Mountains in southern California. The corridor was preserved through partnerships formed between conservation agencies, state agencies, and a private landowner.

To the west, residents in Whittier began organizing in the early 1980s, drawing on a map what they planned to protect. To date they have secured nearly 1,620 ha. In 1994, as public understanding of the concepts of conservation biology grew, conservationists joined forces across the hills and across political boundaries to work together to connect the remaining wildlands. Four cities, 3 state resource agencies, and public members formed the Wildlife Corridor Conservation Authority.

The Authority's first task was to identify the impediments to connectivity. A landmark mountain lion (Puma concolor) study in the early 1990s provided indisputable evidence that only one connection, Coal Canyon, remained linking the hills to the larger natural lands of the Cleveland National Forest in the Santa Ana Mountains (Beier et al. 1993). Decades earlier, a freeway underpass with on and off ramps was built at Coal Canyon, but the land on either side remained undeveloped. They were exit ramps to nowhere. Cougars were using 2 side-by-side 8 × 8-ft culverts that were each approximately 850 ft long; however, these culverts did not work for the suite of other wildlife that needed to be able to roam (Noss et al. 1998).

The cost of extending utilities to this area helped delay development. The 13 ha on the north side, in the city of Yorba Linda, was zoned commercial. The City longed for sales tax revenue from an outlet mall. The 264-ha parcel on the south side in Anaheim was already entitled for over 1,550 housing units, 3.2 ha of retail, an elementary school, and open space.

Across the hills, attention by all interested government entities and activists became focused on saving Coal Canyon. From the beginning, the effort to establish CHSP had enjoyed strong support across county and party lines. Democrats and Republicans in both the Assembly and Senate across the hills continued to work together to affirm state interest in protecting Coal Canyon with bipartisan member requests for funding.

In 1997, the effort to protect Coal Canyon began in earnest. At the urging of a CHSP Resource Ecologist, the book Song of the Dodo (Quammen 1997) circulated through the coalition of activists and government officials. The Chief of Resource...