“No Canyon Hills!”: From La Tuna to MUNA, the rallying cry heard ‘round LA

Along the northern fringe of Los Angeles, where the city spills into the Verunda Mountains by way of Tujunga and Sunland, rolling mountains of chaparral and oak woodland make a more-than-suitable habitat for creatures otherwise outcast from much of Southern California due to the growing sprawl of urban development. In 2003, LA City Council approved the construction of a 300-acre luxury housing development in this area called Canyon Hills. The proposed Canyon Hills project would include intense grading of the land, and many local experts believe the project would cause significant ecological disruption to the site. The developers for the Canyon Hills project were granted a permit in 2005 good for 20 years. Thus far, they haven’t started construction. But for the developers, time pressure is on. They recently filed for a grading permit with the LA Department of City Planning, which would allow the developers to reshape the mountains under which the luxury homes will be built. This land is home to several endangered animal species, including a bumble bee, mountain lion, and red-tailed hawk. There’s also a fantastic array of plant life, so great it has captured the interest of LA-area botanists and hobbyists, and even led them to organize. 

No Canyon Hills formed in early 2023, first stemming from a botany hobbyist Instagram groupchat. When the hobbyists caught word of the imminent housing development in an extraordinarily ecologically rich landscape just outside of LA, they sprang to action and came together under the moniker-slash-rally-call “No Canyon Hills”. Within the last year, the once-unofficial group has grown into a full-fledged direct action organization with a public awareness campaign making waves all around Los Angeles. But how did a group of LA-area botany enthusiasts become political campaigners? 

The land threatened by the Canyon Hills development is part of the unceded territory and ancestral homelands of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians and the Gabrielino (Tongva) Band of Mission Indians, who have shown support anti-colonial land conservation efforts in this region for generations. Over the last 20 years since the Canyon Hills development was first approved by LA City Council, the land north of LA has become an increasingly important habitat to plant and animal species as the LA metro area grows and pushes further towards the northern mountains. This encroaching of human development onto wild spaces-- known by some as “urban creep” - is a big problem for ecosystem health up and down the West Coast; and is a major concern for fire mitigation experts. The proposed Canyon Hills development will offer million-dollar homes in a LAFD-classified “Very High Fire Safety Severity Zone”. These homes will be difficult to defend from wildfires, and will impede preventative wildfire mitigation in the area. This region was already the site of the infamous La Tuna fires in 2016, impacting the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Californians. 

In early Winter 2023, community members in Tujunga became aware that the developers of the proposed Canyon Hills luxury community had applied for grading permits after 16 years of inactivity within the Canyon Hills project. This information found its way by word-of-mouth into the botany hobbyist group chat populated by LA-area plant enthusiasts from many walks of life, including Otis School of Arts and Design professor Emma Kemp (she/they), and botanist-by-day, queer-artist-by-night Haley Hopkins (they/them). Along with other botanists ranging from total expert to complete novice, Hopkins began organizing trips out to the proposed Canyon Hills development site in order to collect ecological data about the area, mostly, what kinds of plant and animal species could be found. Hopkins calls these informal trips “BioBlitzes”, and these trips have been a key part of the NCH project. The BioBlitzes have given small-time researchers the ability to make big discoveries, like the presence (and abundance!) of threatened and endangered species in the proposed Canyon Hills site. Fired up by the data from the BioBlitzes and organized loosely around a passion for local conservation, Kemp, along with several others, began working in solidarity with local indigenous communities by reaching out to their networks to invite collaborators onto a No Canyon Hills project. People from the design world, as well as local historians, culture, and legal experts began chipping in, and soon, No Canyon Hills was formed in earnest as a not-for-profit project and community coalition supporting the ecological vitality of the Verdugo Mountains, and the anti-colonial land conservation projects started in local indigenous communities. 

The first official community interest meeting held by NCH was held in Tujunga in Spring 2023, in a small neighborhood church. Kemp recalls that the church was once used as a secret meetup location for lesbian social groups, has only a small religious congregation but a robust community network. Kemp calls the event a “visioning night”, and says that the idea of coming together to envision a future of positive change that communities members are directly involved in, an event whose agenda is set around imagining a hopeful future, was familiar to some of her collaborators -- namely, the queer artists who were on board from the jump. But for other sorts of thinkers -- like recreationalists, politicians, and legal experts who also became involved in NCH early on, the idea of a “visioning night” was an unfamiliar concept that left many wondering what to expect. The event put the building at capacity, with over 200 attendees both in-person and on Zoom. It was a huge happening, and only a couple of months after a curiosity about the Canyon Hills site was floated in the botany hobbyist IG chat. From there, the network expanded even more wildly, and now, NCH hosts a large swath of independent research supporting the re-evaluation of the Canyon Hills building permits, as well as a grassroots media and political campaign that has taken the LA area by storm. You might recognize their community-created poster series, or have spotted some of their merch at local concerts and community events. FruitSlice’s editor-in-chief Chloe Oloren met NCH people first at the LA County Book Fair, and then again at a MUNA concert. Maybe you’ll see them around somewhere soon?

Can’t wait to get involved with NCH? Visit their website (nocanyonhills.org), follow their Instagram (@nocanyonhills), or send an email asking for more information (nocanyonhills@gmail.com). NCH is always on the lookout for collaborators, and they’ll take any way you have to help. Whether you’re an artist, writer, scholar, designer, scientist, organizer, hobbyist, novice plant expert, or creator of any kind, as long as you have an interest in local ecosystem health, then there’s probably someone already doing work that interests you at NCH. And if not, even better, you’re just an email message or two away from being a part of the grassroots network that holds up this organization, from community meetups in Tujunga to labor of love of enthusiasts of all sorts. 

Contact:

Emma Kemp, No Canyon Hills and Otis College of Arts and Design

Haley Hopkins, No Canyon Hills

nocanyonhills@gmail.com

Read more at www.nocanyonhills.com, which was a fruitful source for much of the information in this article. 

Cam Reid

Cam Reid (they/them) is a writer, educator, theater artist, and novice naturalist in Portland, Oregon. More of their work can be found at www.cam-reid.com.

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