RECALL RANCH
Hanging in the balance is the recall election. Davis, who has generally been friendly to environmentalists, is under the gun to help make the sale of the ranch and the Ballona Wetlands happen before the recall election. Despite the administration’s strong new strides, the fate of the ranch is still up in the air – even if the recall goes ahead. “It’s possible a new governor could do pretty much anything he likes,” says Stanley Young, communications director at the State Resources Agency. “I’m not a governmental expert, or a legal expert, but I believe that there are executive orders that a [new] governor could put in place to put stuff on hold.”
Euphoria over the sale negotiations is also tempered by the history of the long fight over Ahmanson Ranch. “We have to make [Washington Mutual] see the advantages and do this,” says Mary Wiesbrock of Save Open Space, who, since 1989, has fought to preserve Ahmanson Ranch as a park. “We have to make them realize that they are going to look like heroes. If they renege, it will be horrible, so we have to get them to do this. It won’t happen without them.”
Parks points to Wiesbrock and her group as one of the prime movers in the conservation effort. “I look forward to walking the ‘Mary Wiesbrock Trail’ to China Flat to see one of the most beautiful populations of the endangered San Fernando Valley spineflower,” says Parks. “It’s like that Margaret Mead quote: ‘Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing
that ever has.’ This is a small group that persevered and never gave up.”
Jonathan Parfrey, director of the Los Angeles chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, tries to put the battle over Ahmanson Ranch into a larger perspective. “There has to be a new paradigm, a new way of living on the land in California,” Parfrey says. “Preserving the land at Ahmanson Ranch is one way of doing that. Even folks that never go to a wilderness area are somehow ennobled by there being a wilderness, because it gives flight to their imagination that there are still wild places. It’s going to be something that will benefit everybody in Southern California, even if they never visit it. It gives them peace of mind.”
