'Things are not as they teach us'

I took a tour today of Los Angeles' Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve.

Partly I looked forward to seeing something new, partly I wanted to compare the Whittier Narrows Natural Area to another wildlife area in Southern California.

I and a couple of other people from the campaign were led on our tour by members of the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Committee. The three of us were impressed by the abundance of wildlife, especially birds, we encountered this afternoon.

All three of us are members of the Audubon Society, and as we stopped time and again to view egrets, cormorants, herons, cooper's hawks and ospreys, one of our hosts gently reminded us that we weren't there to "add to our lists" but to tour the reserve.

The comment elicited laughs and smiles.

In the comparison between the Natural Area and the reserve, two things struck me.

First, the reserve showed far better maintenance and far more extensive restoration. This difference must certainly be attributable to the wildlife committee's two decades of work. It must also be attributable to the difference between city funding and county funding for parks and recreation.

Second, the reserve has far less infrastructure than that proposed for the Natural Area in the San Gabriel River Discovery Center project. A parking lot, a storage building, a restroom facility and a small amphitheater (pictured at right)--that's all there is at the reserve.

No $30 million 18,000-square-foot watershed education and conference center. No 150-seat multipurpose meeting room. No artificial wetland to capture runoff from all the other structures. Just lots of restored habitat and wildlife.

And yet even without a discovery center, Los Angeles Audubon, San Fernando Valley Audubon and other groups seem to offer a rich calendar of programs for families, student groups and others at the wildlife reserve.

When I reflect on the story the Discovery Center Authority has created, telling us that environmental education and conservation depend on the discovery center being built, well, it makes me angry.

Effective environmental education probably depends on a lot of things. Access to the outdoors, firsthand experiences of nature, and dedicated professional and volunteer educators are among them.

Construction of a conference center for bureaucrats and water officials is not.