"If you put up that fence, I won't be able to get water.  Or mate."
                                      - pretty much any mountain lion, deer,
                                        bobcat, fox or coyote in the Santa Monica
                                        Mountains

"The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” – Jane Goodall

We need your help to protect our favorite mountain lion, P-22, and the scientist the city of Los Angeles hired to protect him and his fellow creatures, Kat Superfisky.

Both are at risk from short-sighted city budgeting planning due to mindless over-development in our hillsides. We are literally one or two mansions away from completely blocking all possibility of keeping our hillside ecosystems healthy and resilient, which is a preventable tragedy.

So we have to move fast.

The Los Angeles City Council voted in 2016 to protect wildlife habitat throughout the Santa Monica Mountains and around Congressman Adam Schiff's entire Rim of the Valley area, surrounding the San Fernando Valley, from Woodland Hills, Encino, and Brentwood, to Bel Air​, Beverly Hills, and Studio City to the Hollywood Hills and Griffith Park and the LA River, to Shadow Hills and Lakeview Terrace, to Sylmar, Porter Ranch, Chatsworth and West Hills. This is important because our health as a human community depends greatly on the health of the nature around us. If you look at the jam-packed legislation file, you can see all the organizations who support this (The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy​, the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Associations and even San Pedro and the U.S. Department of the Interior supports this concept)

Most importantly, by protecting setbacks from homes and fences for wildlife to pass through, we will also be protecting our homes from wildfires. Those setbacks will allow fire trucks and other first responders to get through more easily when we most need them to, when our lives can depend on their ability to do so.

Why it hasn't happened yet is not just a mystery, it is political malfeasance.

Every single year since it was approved we supporters have fought to fund the staff in the City Planning Department to complete the project, including an ecologist to oversee the effort. Every single year Mayor Garcetti does not include the staff in his annual budget, which, we've heard, is because the City Planning Department simply doesn't want to do the project.

Since when is a department allowed to ignore policy that has been set by the City Council?  The situation is more than troubling.

We ask you to sign this petition asking that Mayor Garcetti and the City Council fully fund the staff and resources necessary to complete the entire Rim of the Valley wildlife protection project as soon as possible and demanding that the City Planning Department complete the relatively tiny pilot study ordinance they have recently released and use the findings to complete, fully implement and enforce wildlife protection throughout the Rim of the Valley and all around the San Fernando Valley and in our other natural areas, like the Sepulveda Basin and the areas in and surrounding the Arroyo Seco.