Briana Mendez-Padilla | Impulso
Despite being only about 15 minutes from the hectic and noisy city, the sound of coyotes and owls is a normal, everyday noise for those who live near Elephant Hill.
Also known as “The Sky,” Elephant Hill’s 110 acres of open space are a family retreat for nature lovers and residents of El Sereno. That’s why by facing various threats over the years — from construction attempts to the passage of off-road vehicles and garbage — the community has created its own ecosystem to defend it.
Although she doesn’t like to be the center of attention, all the people who work to preserve Elephant Hill point to Elva Yáñez as the foundation and foundation of advocacy. Yáñez lived in El Sereno in the 80s, then moved and later returned to that area, located northeast of downtown Los Angeles, to buy his current home in 2001.
“I thought it’s nice to have this open space behind my neighbor’s house, but I didn’t really consider it something that was threatened,” he said.
But in 2003, she and her neighbors began seeing surveyors in their neighborhood. Concerned about the impact of gentrification and the damage to the nature of open space, Yáñez, along with co-founder Hugo Garcia, created the environmental organization Save Elephant Hill.
Yáñez has experience in organizing, since he participated in the Chicano movement in his youth and already as an adult worked in defense of public policies around alcohol and tobacco. So, although he knew what it took to carry out a campaign at the time, he admits that when they started this work, he had no idea what he was going to suppose, because conservation itself is a “very complicated process”.
“It wasn’t until I became very familiar with the issue, you know, over time, when I realized it was something like, wow, it was a very big bite,” Yáñez said.
Nationally, parks located in neighborhoods with a majority of residents of color are typically half the size of predominantly white neighborhood parks, even though they serve five times more people per acre, according to data on equity in Trust for Public Land parks.
In Los Angeles, specifically, residents of neighborhoods of color have access to 33% less park space per person than the city average and 72% less than those in white neighborhoods.
Having something as simple as a space for hiking can be especially impactful for a neighborhood like El Sereno, which is mainly Latino, a community that in general has a high incidence of diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension, García explained.
“It has been proven and proven that getting out of the city environment and the urban environment to enjoy open spaces and the tranquility of being in nature and outdoors has a positive effect on the mental health of the residents of all communities, and we believe that our community would benefit from it,” Garcia said.
The parks also provide a refuge amid a tense political climate, marked by terror and fear, Garcia said. The rise of ICE raids in Los Angeles has made many immigrant families afraid to leave their homes and venture out of their communities, so having an open space like Elephant Hill can not only help their mental health, but also offers a safe place for communities to be in touch with nature and relax.
“There is a lot of authoritarianism and fascism in our communities, and I feel that what we have been doing is not necessarily addressed, but it does make people who think they can now do what they want, wherever they want, they are accountable,” Yáñez said.
Collaborations
Strategic collaborations with community and city leaders have been instrumental in Elephant Hill’s conservation efforts over the past two decades.
“We have to walk very carefully to maintain our credibility both in the community and before elected officials and [municipal] agencies,” Yáñez said.
Garcia had his own contacts in the community since his days as an environmental defender and they raised the question of development, when he first emerged, to the then municipal councilor Antonio Villaraigosa, Yáñez said.
In 2004, the promoter was granted authorization to move forward with that particular project as defined. However, when he expanded his project from 13 to 25 acres, they resorted to the relationship they had previously established with Villaraigosa. By then, they had also created an informal coalition that included groups such as the Council for the Defence of Natural Resources, which specializes in environmental and land use issues.
In 2009, the Los Angeles City Council acquired 20 acres of the property in question, as part of an agreement with the developer, and in 2012, city officials requalified the 20 acres as open space. In 2011, five of those 20 acres were acquired by the Mountain Conservation and Recreation Authority (MRCA) to create an accessible hiking trail that would ensure public access to space.
The Complexities of Elephant Hill
One of the unique features of Elephant Hill, which also makes it difficult to preserve, is that it is a combination of public and private land. While the city owns some and the MCRA of others, the rest of the plot is unevenly divided between the open space, and most of the plots are individually owned or an owner has two or three.
Because of this, as well as the lack of effective roads, explained Joey Farewell, an environmental lawyer and a member of the California Native Plant Society, the development of Elephant Hill is economically and logistically unviable.
“In a way, that provides protection to the hill, because the only way it makes sense for someone to try to develop it is if it accumulates all the plots, or a lot of them,” Farewell said.
However, this has not stopped some unscrupulous individuals from attempting to carry out individual developments that damage the earth. Elephant Hill advocates have had to deal with a landlord who cut down a protected elderberry tree and proceeded to build sheds despite community complaints.
Farewell moved to El Sereno in 2021 and with his experience as a lawyer, in conservation and appreciation for nature, he wanted to know how he could help preserve and maintain these natural spaces that have provided him with happy memories with his family.
One of these ways is to keep an eye out for the real estate market to keep track of any entity that tries to acquire multiple lots, as well as know who owns each.
“The real estate sector is a market, so those lands are bought and sold,” Farewell explained. “Our job as policy advocates is to argue that the best use that can be given to those lands and to those plots is to contribute to a broader project, like a park, rather than keep them as a speculative good that someone can buy in the hope of selling it to someone else.”
He explained that, in a way, that an owner has several plots can be something negative, because it could make it feasible for him to try to carry out a project, but it could also be a positive thing if he decided not to build due to the complexities of building on the hill, since then the MRCA could acquire several different plots at one time.
But development has not been the only threat to Elephant Hill. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this open space also became a place frequented by off-road enthusiasts, a practice that disturbs wildlife and contributes to another problem, the garbage dump.
But getting rid of the garbage on Elephant Hill has its own complexities, as city garbage trucks can’t climb the hill due to a lack of established streets.
In 2021, Christian Aeschliman, originally from Los Angeles who moved to El Sereno in 2015, formed Heroes of Elephant Hill, a group of volunteers who met sporadically to clean up illegal landfills in Elephant Hill.
However, although these cleanups were effective at the time, the garbage soon accumulated again, which was daunting.
“This is very hard for anyone after a while. At first we had a lot of passion, because we were really making a difference, but then, when all the garbage reappears, it’s like a blow and you feel like you’re not attacking the root of the problem and maybe nobody cares,” said Aeschliman, who nevertheless appreciates the connections he has created with the community and hopes to continue with the cleaning events.
The role of native species
For land advocates, Elephant Hill and other conservation initiatives are not only concerned with the impact of these spaces on humans, but also on the role they play in the natural ecosystem of native plant and animal species.
Test Plot is a non-profit organization that aims to establish restoration gardens on degraded land in and around Los Angeles neighborhoods, and in 2022, thanks to a public-private collaboration among resident groups, MRCA, the California Native Plant Society, USC, Northeast Trees and TreePeople, Elephant Hill Test Plot was created.
Farewell has also been actively involved in Test Plot’s efforts and helped plant the first batch of plants in the fall of 2022. Some of the initial efforts were to remove invasive species from the area before planting native plants such as brush coyote, lemonade berry, laurel sumac, and, more recently, California sunflowers.
These plants have thrived, in addition to fulfilling their role of attracting again many insects and mammals native to the area, explained Naomi Guevara, a landscaper and caregiver of the experimental plot since 2023.
The plot has also allowed people to see which species do not work, as there is no irrigation system on the hill and managers depend on rainfall patterns. Learning what works and what doesn’t through the test plot is critical to being able to expand native plants to the rest of the acres.
“I think the best thing about the test plot is that it offers anyone the opportunity to support these initiatives and learn about them,” said Angelina Guevara. “You don’t need to have a degree in restoration, ecology, or biology to be part of this.”
With education, about native plants through posters and different community events what Elephant Hill advocates do, they hope it will also help combat the challenges posed by illegal off-road driving and garbage.
In these efforts they work with community partners, including Coyotl+Macehualli founded by Brenda Contreras and Micah Haserjian who is dedicated to protecting the open spaces of northeast Los Angeles and the black walnut in Southern California.
“We place a lot of emphasis on having that connection with the earth and really supporting the land where it is necessary, because the more people have that connection, the more people will care and more will get involved, and the more pressure can be exerted,” Contreras said, adding that this is true not only for Elephant Hill, but for all other hills and open spaces in Los Angeles that need to be defended.
This story was produced by American Community Media in collaboration with the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at UCLA as part of the Greening American Cities initiative supported by the Bezos Earth Fund. Read more stories like this by visiting the Greening Communities homepage.
