So the mountain parks and urban parks are separate initiatives?


Not at all. We view the two sets of parks as vitally connected. They’re part of the same watershed and the same airshed. They’re essential public spaces, which we all pay for and share. The neighborhood parks help you appreciate the necessity of wildlands, and a walk in the mountain parks can make you crave nature in your neighborhood and to understand its importance.


Starting with Hawkins in 2000, we’ve made these connections by just literally connecting up the two sets of parks—with free weekend buses from the city parks to the mountains. In 2007, we partnered up with the Anahuak Youth Soccer League and the City Project to run trips to the mountains from the brand-new Rio de Los Angeles State Park near our River Center headquarters. We’ve since adopted the name of that program, Transit to


Trails, for our whole bus program. Sadly, the current budget cuts mean that we can’t run as many trips as we used to, but we still run Transit to Trails trips from Rio do Los Angeles, Vista Hermosa, and Washington Elementary School in Compton.


A couple of Junior Ranger programs, too, use the city parks as launch points. One, with the Anahuak folks, takes the kids to the mountains to learn about animal tracks, wilderness safety, and where L.A.’s water comes from—and all the other things kids get always excited about when you take them to a place like Temescal Gateway Park or King Gillette Ranch. Ditto for a brand-new mounted Junior Ranger program with the Compton Junior Posse—a group that teaches inner-city youth to ride and take care of horses, as the core of a program to empower the kids with the skills they need to succeed.


And, of course, we take the Anahuak, Compton Junior Posse,


and Washington Elementary kids on camping trips—stars! campfire songs!—and we host campouts for the Anahuak families (not just the kids) at our Ramirez Canyon Park in Malibu.


Closing thoughts?


Environmental justice has to be about both words, and, most important, about the essential connections. You can’t have a healthy environment without justice: a healthy watershed, for example, requires parks everywhere, and not just in the affluent neighborhoods. And you can’t have a just metropolis without a healthy environment, in which everyone enjoys that basic right. Environment. Justice. MRCA’s mission fully recognizes that you can’t have one without the other.


Jennifer Wolch et al., Parks and Park Funding in Los Angeles: An Equity Mapping Analysis, USC Center for Sustainable Cities, 2002.


Teaching camping skills during an outreach program for at-risk youth at Ramirez Canyon Park.


Winter 2012 7


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