The Unseen Wildlife Highway in Los Angeles

When the Eaton Fire tore through the Altadena foothills in January 2025, it melted two of the three wildlife cameras Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy (AFC) had in Rubio Canyon. The third survived. What it recorded afterward was not devastation but movement: bears, bobcats, deer, foxes, and mountain lions coming home.

A few miles west, at AFC’s Cottonwood Canyon Preserve above the Rose Bowl, staff found fresh wildlife tracks. Animals fleeing the flames had come down the Arroyo Seco into the San Rafael Hills, using exactly the passage the Conservancy spent years piecing together. “That’s one of the purposes of a wildlife corridor,” says CEO John Howell. “To escape wildfire.”

Most Angelenos have never heard of the Hahamongna to Tujunga Wildlife Corridor. On a map, the Verdugo Mountains, San Rafael Hills, and Griffith Park look like a chain of parks. In reality they are ecological islands, split by freeways, flood channels, and cul-de-sacs. The Verdugo Mountains hold 18 square miles of habitat animals struggle to get into or out of.  

AFC secures small patches of native habitat in densely developed areas to create stepping stones wildlife use to move between these islands. Founded in 2000 by four women hikers from Altadena watching critical natural habitat disappear to bulldozers, the Conservancy began work that no one else was doing. AFC now holds 23 properties in the foothill communities of Altadena, Pasadena, Glendale, and La Crescenta.  

Community Stewardship

The model is patient and personal. Landowners get to know AFC over years, come to appreciate what their acreage means to wildlife, and often sell land to the Conservancy on favorable terms. Every purchase gains a “Friends group” of neighbors who steward it. Barbara Goto, now Director of Operations, joined as one of 213 La Crescenta residents who chipped in $100,000 to help buy the Rosemont Preserve in 2012. This same group started a free field trip program focused on native plants, wildlife, and geology – AFC now hosts 86 field trips each year for 3,000 students, 60% from schools receiving Title I funding. Every summer, AFC’s internship program puts high schoolers and college students directly into the field – learning to set remote wildlife cameras, track native and invasive plant species, and study the wildlife corridors connecting the San Gabriel Mountains to open space in the Los Angeles basin. 

The fire delivered one more lesson. In Altadena’s Millard Canyon, the oak woodland AFC protected as another preserve, acted as a firebreak, suppressing flammable undergrowth and catching embers that otherwise could ignite houses. Oak trees, it turns out, help protect adjacent homes against wildfire.

AFC’s work is impacting the whole L.A. region. Their newest initiative focuses on getting native plants — not merely drought-tolerant ones — into backyards, schools, and storefronts across Los Angeles. These residential pockets of land might otherwise be filled with non-native plants that don’t support the local ecosystem or invasive grasses waiting to fuel a fire. AFC’s work helps transform them into thriving habitat and sanctuaries for biodiversity.