Wildlife Sanctuary battles silently amid city growth and development

With international talks about climate change dominating news cycles, focus has been on government action to mitigate the environmental problems worldwide. Issues of urban growth, habitat protection and preservation are often tasked to government entities, but other environmental battles are fought, often unknown, in smaller communities.

In Walnut, Calif., a city of 32,000 residents and a burgeoning community college population, a relatively hidden treasure has been silently battling to survive against budget cuts, relocation proposals and urban growth.

The Wildlife Sanctuary at Mt. San Antonio College (Mt. SAC) is a lush preserve that has been a part of the college and the city for over 40 years in an unassuming, yet busy street corner of Grand and Temple. Established in 1964, the Sanctuary is a ten-acre protected preserve for plants, shrubs, and animals of Walnut Valley, owned and funded by Mt. SAC and maintained by the college’s Biological Sciences faculty.

In July 2009, Walnut completed a $1.488 million road expansion project (PDF) on Grand Avenue, the main artery to and from Walnut and Mt. SAC, taking about an acre of the preserve where large oak trees and vegetation once stood, according to Craig Peterson, Wildlife Sanctuary Director. 

Relatively untouched and unchanged by developments in Walnut, it has become one of the few places in the San Gabriel Valley left undisturbed. But urban growth, among other factors, is a looming presence that habitat preservations like the Sanctuary faces.

Land with ‘nothing’ on it

Habitat preservations offer invaluable resources to the local community. The Wildlife Sanctuary supports six different ecosystems with wetlands rich in vegetation and wildlife, providing learning opportunities for students. Such opportunities are becoming harder to come by as housing, business plazas and transportation take up free land and lessons on the environment are relegated to textbook illustrations.

Craig Petersen, 62, has been the director since 1981. He has overseen the maintenance, cultivation and operations of the Sanctuary for over 20 years with passion and appreciation.

“Some people said this corner between Temple and Grand is now the most valuable piece of property in the whole city of Walnut because it has ‘nothing’ on it,” he said. “From my perspective, it’s full of native animals and wildlife and teaching opportunities that is extraordinary.”

For years, the Sanctuary has provided thousands of students from the college with onsite lessons on ecosystems and native plants of the region. But Petersen wanted to reach more students in nearby cities, not just the college.

“Many people see a bunch of weeds there,” he said. “They’re not familiar with it until there’s an article about it or until they’ve got a class, and there [are] many faculty that have been here many years that haven’t set foot in it.”

So in 2006, the Wildlife Sanctuary partnered up with Orange County Department of Education’s “Inside the Outdoors” (ITO) program. ITO provides science programs to students in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties through field trips to various nature centers. The field program at Mt. SAC offers programs for K-4 students with lessons on ecosystem exploration and local Native American lifestyle per California curriculum standards.

“It [partnership with Mt. SAC] has expanded our program to younger students, which has been traditionally more for fourth and fifth graders,” said Kelly Ellis, the project assistant with ITO. “It’s a great way for students to get out in nature. Especially students from low-income families, who may not have had a chance to see so many trees before.”

Mainly funded by grants, ITO has brought more than 8,000 students to the Sanctuary.

It has also brought the Sanctuary much-needed funds. A small student fee from ITO goes directly to the Sanctuary to pay for field naturalists, Ellis said.

In the recent years, the Sanctuary has received a $2,000 annual budget from the college for tools and maintenance. One year, the budget was barely enough to buy two bags of gravel, according to Petersen.

But funding and urban development are not the only battles the Sanctuary and other nature centers and parks around the country face. The survival of these local treasures depends heavily on community members to continue the work needed to safeguard natural habitats.

To do that, the community would need to see the value of the Sanctuary and other natural parks, especially as communities continue to expand and progress. That is what the Sanctuary’s partnership with ITO hopes to do.

“Someday I won’t be here and we don’t know who might be the next person to take charge or take the responsibility,” Petersen said. “Since I’ve been here 30 years, it has been a life-long love of mine to try and keep it going.”

A growing community

Walnut, a residential community ranked as one of the top cities to live in by Money Magazine, has a significant commuter population of college students. This year, Mt. SAC reported a 7 percent increase in enrollment.

Because of this and the city’s growth, Grand Avenue, the main road to the college, has been a cause for concern. Increased traffic over the years has frustrated Walnut residents and the City Council.

“The Grand Avenue intersection has been the most complained about intersection by Walnut residents,” said Mary Rooney, the community services director for Walnut. “It has been on the city’s Capital Improvement list for years.”

The original proposal to alleviate traffic was to use the existing road south of the Sanctuary, but Mt. SAC and the Sanctuary opposed it. Access to the existing road would put the preserve under heavier noise and air pollution, according to Petersen.

The approved project expanded the intersection with more right and left turn lanes to alleviate traffic. The expansion took a 40-foot wedge-shaped area from the Sanctuary.

To offset this loss, the Mt. SAC Board of Trustees agreed to give fifteen acres of land southwest of the preserve and $750,000 to re-vegetate and cultivate the land, as well as to remove the existing road.

But Petersen is realistic about what could come to fruition.

“The enlargement of the Sanctuary has been promised, but not much has moved forward because of the budgetary crisis,” he said.

The money for the Sanctuary is under a local bond, Bond Measure RR, which Mt. SAC hopes to sell soon, according to John Nixon, president of the college’s Board of Trustees.

“We have been promised $750,000 which is huge. But we don’t know if we’ll ever see it,” Petersen said. “If they hold up to their promises, the Wildlife Sanctuary will become mitigated land which will make it more difficult, just at a snap of a finger, to take over and do something with it.”

Nixon, on the other hand, is confident about the future of the Sanctuary.

“The Board of Trustees is committed to it [the Sanctuary], in fact we’re expanding it. There is no jeopardy for the Sanctuary.”

But even if its removal is not in the immediate future, ongoing developments in nearby cities could negatively impact the Sanctuary.

Nearby, the City of Industry plans to build an NFL stadium, which could require future improvements on Grand Avenue. Increased traffic, noise, light and air pollution would interrupt the ecosystems, which are migratory and breeding grounds for many animals.

Though no developments are being discussed yet, Petersen knows that it’s only a matter of time until they may have to face another hurdle.

“This has always been a battle,” he said.

When asked what future developments might mean to the Sanctuary, Petersen quoted environmentalist and author Dr. Richard Vogl, “A preservationist has to win many battles. A developer only has to win once.”

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For more information on Bond Measure RR, click here.

Under the Radar: The Copenhagen Summit

Between health care reform news and the daily reports about the economy, it is no surprise that a climate change summit scheduled for December 7 in Denmark has passed under the radar in America.

The Copenhagen Summit is the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference and will run for two weeks. It is the 15th Conference of the Parties, officially COP15, where more than 60 leaders will negotiate and create a succeeding pact to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Protocol committed 37 industrialized countries and the European community to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent compared to the 1990 levels of each country. The U.S. signed the Kyoto Protocol but never ratified it.

COP15 will also address the role of developing countries and what industrialized nations must do to put them on a “clean energy path,” said Yvo De Boer, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary.

The inclusion of many developing countries in the summit shows the growing importance of a global effort to address the rapidly increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It also calls for industrialized countries, like the United States, to ramp up commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

President Obama has announced the country’s climate target to reduce emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels based on the House of Representative bill passed earlier this year.

With recent reports of alarmingly high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the worsening impacts of warming since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, Obama’s attendance can change opinions about the country’s commitment to environmental issues.

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as the UNFCCC, acknowledges that a legally-binding treaty with every detail finalized may not take place next month.

And public opinion in the U.S. seems to be shifting as well.

There has been a decline in the number of Americans who believe in global warming, according to a report released last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The number of Americans who believe that there is sound evidence that the earth is warming declined from 71 percent in April 2008 to only 57 percent in October. Fewer people also see global warming as a serious problem, declining from 44 percent to 35 percent.

Even Congress has stalled on climate change legislation. The House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 but the Senate is yet to introduce a bill.

With an economy still struggling to recover from a recession and high unemployment rates that continue to plague states, Americans are quick to skip environmental issues when prioritizing. Not to mention a six-year war in Iraq and a possible increase in troop deployment in Afghanistan, environmental policies are slowly being eclipsed by health care reform and other pressing social issues.

There is also the matter of finances. A global treaty would need money to implement, restructure, adjust or accommodate any changes to our current environmental policies. Part of the summit’s focus would be to determine how funding would be managed to undertake such a treaty and what changes would be undertaken with the new treaty. Such changes, undoubtedly, will face fierce opposition and debate on what climate change policy would mean to consumers, energy and coal industries.

Though I have faith that COP15 will blaze the trail to a more inclusive climate change treaty, it will take a long time before any commitment will come to fruition. While I am hopeful, I will not be holding my breath.

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Get more information on the Copenhagen Summit here.

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Francesca Gacho holds a B.A. in English from Cal State Fullerton. She is an intern at Minority Dreams Magazine, where she hopes to spread her journalistic wings, explore and hone her writing ability, and gain insight into the myriad of issues in today’s soundbite-focused world. Her writing interests include human interest pieces that delve into culture, arts, current events, and community service.

94607: Oakland’s Childhood Asthma Hotspot

West Oakland is pinned between the Bay Area’s largest, busiest port and two major commuter freeways, and is home to decades of legacy pollution, making this marginalized but determined community a hotspot for childhood asthma and other illnesses.

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Photography & Audio by Kim Komenich; produced by Kim Komenich, Josh Wilson and David Cohn for Newsdesk.org; Crowdfunded by Spot.Us. Part of the Bay Area Toxic Tour.

The Climate Gap - Poor, Minorities Hardest Hit by Climate Change

People who live in neighborhoods with dirtier air and water – usually low-income and ethnic minorities - will bear the brunt of climate change, according to a report released May 29.

Climate change will increase pollution, harm public health, raise the costs of food, energy and water, and result in job losses, with the greatest burden falling on communities of color and the poor, the study found.

“Climate change is real. So is the climate gap. It’s not something fictitious, made up by communities who feel underrepresented,” said Dr. Manuel Pastor, one of the report’s authors and a professor at the University of Southern California.

Pastor, who directs the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at USC’s Center for Sustainable Cities, says that as environmentalists and policymakers come up with policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they also need to address the disproportionate impact that climate change will have on the neediest populations. “The levees that would have protected the poor of New Orleans would have protected the whole city,” he said.

Climate change, studies show, will increase extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires. Air pollution will also worsen with the warming temperatures. Both will take a toll on public health, with people of color and the poor worse off.

African Americans in Los Angeles are twice as likely to die from heat wave-related illnesses than other city residents. A study of the 2006 California heat wave found that Latinos had the highest rates of emergency room visits and hospitalizations in the state. The risk of death because of heat wave-related illness is also higher for infants, the elderly, people with chronic conditions, and those without air conditioning or access to transportation to get to cooler places.

In some cases, people had air conditioning but felt they could not afford to turn it on, said report co-author Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor of environmental science, policy and management in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Communities of color and low-income people tend to live in areas abundant in heat-absorbing concrete and asphalt and lacking in parks and trees that provide shade. This “heat-island effect,” said Morello-Frosch, intensifies the impact of heat waves.

Minimizing the effects of heat waves requires investment in access to quality housing, air conditioning, transportation, cooling centers, green space, as well as more public outreach and education, she said. Another strategy to reduce the impacts of climate change on communities of color is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in neighborhoods with the heaviest polluters.

But this would take an economic toll on the same communities. That’s because the heaviest polluters and emitters of greenhouse gases in California, including power plants, oil refineries and cement factories, employ more people of color (60 percent of their workforce) in jobs that tend to be unionized and higher paying.

Climate change will also result in job losses in the agricultural and tourism sectors, which employ large numbers of minorities.

Some argue that policies that reduce greenhouse gases would increase energy and water costs for consumers, especially those who can least afford it.

But poor families already spend a larger fraction of their household income on water, food and electricity costs, according to the report. Those in the lowest income group paid three times as much for water, and twice as much for food and electricity as those in the highest income group.

“The do-nothing approach will make gaps worse,” said Morello-Frosch.

The report comes at a time when both California and the federal government are considering policies to tackle climate change and reduce carbon emissions. The Waxman-Markey climate bill, passed by a U.S. House of Representatives committee last month, sets ambitious goals for emissions reductions, but does not address how pollution allowances would be distributed, or to what extent they would be auctioned or given away for free. It also does not specify how revenue generated under the system would be spent — for example, to offset consumers’ higher energy bills. The bill still needs to be approved by a full House vote.

Last year, California approved a scoping plan to implement AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. But Dr. Shankar Prasad, of the Coalition for Clean Air, says the state’s plan does not require a portion of the revenues generated to go back to the communities most affected by climate change. The Coalition is among a group of organizations that is pushing for state legislation to create a community benefits fund.

With the state in the midst of a budget crisis, Morello-Frosch believes that tapping revenue from a cap-and-auction system and pouring a portion back into the neediest communities may be the most effective strategy.

USC’s Pastor says there has not been enough communication between environmentalists, who are fighting the effects of climate change, and communities of color, who will feel those effects.

“Environmentalists have had carbon blinders on,” he said. “They’ve been focused on how to reduce carbon emissions … without considering that co-pollutant effects, cost issues, and green jobs creation are essential to the conversation.”

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This article originally appeared on New America Media.