Preserving Our Open Land SWAP Briefs VHOA
By Carol Ford

At the last meeting of VHOA, on September 6th, four members of the board of directors of the Small Wilderness Area Preservation (SWAP) were present. Tina Eike and Cile Borgman talked about their work with SWAP.

SWAP has been very active in preserving our ridge lines on Wentworth, La Tuna, Glendale, and elsewhere. When a development is being proposed in foothills, SWAP negotiates to have the ridge lines preserved. There have been numerous such acquisitions. The overall procedure is to first of all know that the land is for sale and/or be aware that a developer has already begun negotiations.

SWAP then lines up funding for their land acquisitions. Funding can come from all sorts of sources: private, fund raisers, corporate, state, or city.

The procedure includes stipulations of land use, basically restrictions to preserve small wilderness areas. In some cases the land is then sold to the Santa Monica Conservancy. See http://www.ceres.ca.gov/smmc/.

SWAP was instrumental in defining the golf course in the Big Tujunga Wash and the Ponds Mitigation.

Subsequent to these accomplishments, and related discouragements, SWAP became inactive. Tina summed it up for me quite succinctly, "You can only win battles, but not the war."

So, there you have it, one of the key organizations (of maybe about half a dozen people) is burnt out and currently inactive. My offer to put information about SWAP on the VHOA web site was very well received. Perhaps SWAP will once again become active. Maybe if you offer some help, maybe you could sway the pendulum and inspire this highly effective group of people to once again fight on our behalf to preserve our semi-rural lifestyle.

You may contact SWAP by calling Cile Borman at 818-896-6058.