1.Front section - IUCN

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Friends for Life: New partners in support of protected areas
Major restoration of the Los Angeles River Corridor by several agencies, including the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.
© Ted Trzyna
seven ecosystems, including chaparral and freshwater
marsh. The visitor centre and other structures conform
to the high design standards the conservancy applies
to all its projects. A ranger resides on site, supporting
a junior ranger programme and organizing trips to the
conservancy’s mountain parks.
The conservancy’s landscape architect, Stephanie
Landregan, who shepherded the project, notes that
initially “there were lots of naysayers who said ‘why
are you giving that to those people’” However, the
park is now seen as a great success and there are plans
to replicate it elsewhere in Los Angeles. The most
innovative of these plans is for a four-hectare natural
park on the grounds of a new high school. The school
will be divided into several specialized “academies,”
of which one will likely be a “Conservancy Academy”
devoted to education in natural resource management
(Trzyna, 2001a; Sorvig, 2002).
Second, an example from local government. In
Greater London (population 11.9 million), the Mayor
adopted a Biodiversity Strategy in 2002 that aims to
“protect and enhance London’s natural areas and their
associated species and make it possible for Londoners
to have greater contact with nature in their everyday
lives.” According to David Goode, Head of
Environment in the Mayor’s office and a longtime
leader in urban conservation, under this Strategy,
“New approaches with a strong social dimension, that
may at first have seemed a radical departure from
traditional nature conservation, have now been
adopted as an integral part of city management.” For
example, access to nature for people living in
disadvantaged or heavily built-up parts of London is
often given priority even where sites are of relatively
low ecological quality. Areas where residents lack
accessible wildlife sites “within reasonable
proximity” are being mapped to guide future habitat
enhancement or creation and even landscaping. Other
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