California’s federal lawmakers are reviving plans for an unlimited enlargement of the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space, however the effort comes because the Trump administration seeks funding cuts that some worry might result in the world being severed from the Nationwide Park system.
Laws just lately reintroduced by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would add greater than 118,000 acres of what’s often called the Rim of the Valley hall to the roughly 154,000-acre recreation space, dubbed the world’s largest city nationwide park. U.S. Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) plans to introduce the Home model.
The Rim of the Valley hall is a noncontiguous space that stretches from the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains to the Verdugo and the San Gabriel mountains, making a “inexperienced belt” that encircles the San Fernando, Crescenta, Santa Clarita, Simi and Conejo valleys. It additionally encompasses present parks and historic websites, together with Griffith Park and Olvera Road within the metropolis of L.A.
A map depicting the proposed Rim of the Valley hall. The areas that may be added to the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space are marked in yellow and embrace mountains that encircle the San Fernando Valley.
(Nationwide Park Service)
Proponents say the laws, if profitable, would pave the way in which for cohesive administration of the expansive space, in addition to entry to federal funding and experience. It might result in the safety of wildlife corridors — for mountain lions, bears and different native critters — in addition to higher upkeep of trails, in keeping with supporters.
“What that is supposed to do is to open up entry into our nationwide forest and state parks for the general public,” Friedman instructed the Occasions. “So that you add land, however you additionally add a variety of connectivity by doing this so that individuals might get pleasure from these public areas extra simply.”
A Nationwide Park Service spokesperson declined to remark.
It’s not a brand new effort. The truth is, elected officers and environmental activists have sought to guard the Rim of the Valley hall for many years. Comparable laws failed final yr.
The most recent iteration comes because the Trump administration seeks to slash about $1.2 billion in funding for the Nationwide Park Service, or roughly 30% of its working price range, within the coming 2026 fiscal yr, together with $900 million for operations of parks.
In proposing the cuts, the administration has referred to as for ceding sure federal parklands to the states.
The park service’s duties “embrace a lot of websites that aren’t ‘nationwide parks,’ within the historically understood sense, a lot of which obtain small numbers of largely native guests and are higher categorized and managed as state-level parks,” the discretionary price range request states. “The price range would proceed supporting many nationwide treasures, however there may be an pressing must streamline staffing and switch sure properties to state-level administration to make sure the long-term well being and sustainment of the Nationwide Park system.”
Based on an evaluation by the Nationwide Park Conservation Assn., a nonpartisan membership group devoted to defending nationwide parks, the envisioned cuts would result in the evisceration of at the very least 350 of the 433 areas managed by the park service throughout the nation.
Dennis Arguelles, NPCA’s Southern California director, stated he anticipates most funding would go to “marquee parks” like Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite if the cuts undergo.
“Parks just like the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space can be in danger,” he stated.
“Solely Congress has the ability to in the end get rid of federal property and promote it, or give it again to the states, or no matter they’re speaking about doing,” he added. “So the president, this administration, could have that intention, however in the end Congress would have the final say — or ought to have the final say.”
The price range is only one of a number of threats to nationwide parks which have emerged in current months.
In February, roughly 1,000 Nationwide Park Service workers have been laid off as a part of the Trump administration’s push to shrink the federal workforce — together with about eight employees from the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space. Courtroom orders reversed the layoffs, however many consider extra jobs shall be lower.
Since January, NPCA estimates the park service has misplaced about 13% of its employees as a result of pressured buyouts, early retirements and deferred resignation.
Jim Hines, a Ventura County-based citizen activist devoted to defending public lands, waters and wildlife, has been sounding the alarm concerning the vulnerability of the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space. In an off-the-cuff mid-Could e-mail e-newsletter that Hines says goes out to just about 10,000 individuals, he stated the recreation space was “DOGE Goal Quantity One,” referring to the the Division of Authorities Effectivity previously led by Elon Musk.
There’s quite a bit to lose, he wrote in his e-newsletter, together with open house and recreation alternatives within the densely populated Los Angeles space.
In an interview, Hines stated he repeatedly travels to Washington, D.C., and meets together with his “adversaries,” together with Trump administration officers finishing up DOGE directives; he’s been there 5 instances since Trump started his second time period.
Exterior of a handful of representatives with ties to Southern California, members of Congress haven’t heard of the Santa Monica Nationwide Recreation Space, he stated.
“Time to let everybody, all over the place know the significance of the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space … I’ve began with the Trump/DOGE Administration … now the ball is over to YOU,” he wrote within the Could 12 e-newsletter.
Hines believes the imaginative and prescient for the Rim of the Valley hall, which he helps, will in the future be realized — however not this yr. He stated the newest invoice has a “minus zero” likelihood of passing.
The idea for the Rim of the Valley hall was born out of the late Marge Feinberg’s grasp’s thesis within the mid-Seventies, during which the Cal State Northridge graduate scholar envisioned a long-distance path surrounding the hills and mountains of the San Fernando Valley.
Over time, politicians and conservationists took up Feinberg’s trigger.
In 1990, Republican Gov. George Deukmejian green-lighted the completion of a grasp plan of the Rim of the Valley path hall, however that didn’t lead to widespread motion.
In the course of the George W. Bush administration, Congress financed a research of the Rim of the Valley, which the Park Service accomplished in 2016. A invoice then wound its manner by way of Congress through the Trump administration, passing within the Home however dying within the Senate.
Earlier iterations of laws would have added 191,000 acres of land to the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space. Going through backlash from builders and building lobbyists, these payments by no means took.
Any land that was zoned residential or industrial, or that was already developed for these functions, was faraway from the proposal. What’s left is land already protected on the native stage.
Schiff’s involvement with the trouble dates again at the very least 17 years.
“The Rim of the Valley accommodates among the final wild and open areas in Los Angeles and connects our city metropolis facilities and suburbs with the attractive outside,” Schiff stated in an announcement. “This laws will protect the land and wildlife that hundreds of thousands of Angelenos get pleasure from.”
Arguelles, of NPCA, stated the sensible impact of the laws might be gleaned by seeking to the Santa Monica Mountains Nationwide Recreation Space, the place the Nationwide Park Service owns and manages solely about 15% of the land. The recreation space’s federal standing doesn’t strip native jurisdictions of management, he stated. As an alternative, it permits the Park Service to work with different land managers — together with state and native businesses — to revive native vegetation, research path networks and full different complicated initiatives.
A greater than 20-year research on mountain lions in and across the Santa Monica Mountains, for instance, is helmed by the Nationwide Park Service. That analysis has make clear existential threats dealing with the massive cats eking out an existence in an more and more urbanized panorama.
“That’s what they might do in these different areas, by with the ability to apply their sources and their experience,” Arguelles stated.
Even when the invoice will get “slowed down” in D.C., he stated, introducing it helps maintain the problem alive on the native stage.
Occasions employees author Jaclyn Cosgrove contributed to this report.
