“
LA’s 468 square miles of land and 34 square miles of water extend to the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, include nine lakes, one river, and a million trees. Within its borders are 390 public parks and 15,710 acres of parkland. Surprised? Most people—even some who live in LA—are not aware of the immense connection the city still retains to the natural world. Los Angeles has made nature its own, woven its own unique cultural landscape onto the physical one, and perhaps shaped the tale of Mother Nature into a structure it’s comfortable with—that of a Hollywood blockbuster screenplay. Jenny Price, author of the brilliant essay “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA,”writes: “The history of Los Angeles storytelling, if more complicated, still basically boils down to a trilogy. Nature blesses Los Angeles. Nature flees Los Angeles. And nature returns armed.
”
”
Beth Pratt-Bergstrom (When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors: People and Wildlife Working It Out in California)