The Ahmanson Ranch Development :: Ventura Country Environmental Essays

The Ahmanson counterpane DevelopmentIt all started back in 1989 when Home nest egg of America announced to build a giant new lodge consisting of 3,050 homes, two schools, two hotels, two golf courses and 400,000 square feet of commercial and industrial areas on the 5,400-acre Ahmanson paste located at the eastern end of Ventura county, conterminous to Los Angeles County. Even though the Ahmanson Ranch has been owned by Home nest egg of America since 1963, the nature remained undisturbed all these past years. The ranch has deform one of the important habitats for barely surviving native organisms including threatened or endangered species. For this and other important reasons, an organization, Friends of Ahmanson Ranch, was formed to stop the development with the agree from other environmental organizations, local legislatures, politicians and public. Almost seven years imbibe passed since the beginning of this issue, but the conflict still remain unsolved. What is interestin g slightly this issue is the diversity in the reason which the Friends of Ahmanson Ranch claims for protecting the Ahmanson Ranch from development. They point out a variety of reason, and they are not inescapably environmental opinion. First, the reasons of opposition starts from visible things such(prenominal) as plants and living organisms. chairwoman of the Native Plant Society San Gabriel Chapter, Melanie Baer, states that the wild grassland ecosystem of Agoura Hills located in the Ahmanson Ranch provides an important habitat for almost-extinct native plant species called Purple needle-grass, or Stipa pulchra. She overly suggests that the moderateness of this plant will not be successful receivable to its difficulty and poor peripheral environment, such as golf course, of the mitigation site. Similaly, Dr. Barbara J. Collins, professor of biology at California Lutheran University, argues that the environmental electric shock report prepared for the development was inadequa te and she points out the importance of the oak savannah along a North-facing slope of Lakey Mesa in the Ahmanson Ranch. check to her opinion, these oak trees are about 200 to 300 years sometime(a) valley oaks and they are very beautiful species. A large accord of these oaks will be removed, and the remaining will most likely not survive the environmental changes they will go through due to its sensitive nature. In addition, these plants create crucial habitat for other living organisms such as birds, mammals, invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles. Some of them are even listed in the Federal and give tongue to endangered and threatened species lists.