Hills For Everyone

Awaken the Wonder

Hills For Everyone hopes to reignite people’s interest in all things wild and wonderful and to develop a healthier respect for it. With the Park available as a refuge and resource during the recent shutdown, people have come to appreciate how important access to nature is to the human spirit. We hope to improve visitor experience with better signage and interpretive displays so they are less apt to traipse or race thoughtlessly through the hills, damaging the resources in their wake. Our region is part of a global hotspot of biodiversity—a place rich in species threatened by development. There are only 20 hotspots worldwide—and we live smack dab in the middle of one.

Threats to Protected Parklands

Since the 1970s we have supported 35 different acquisitions to create the State Park. We also learned we had to remain engaged to support what we thought we had saved even after the land became a State Park. In that long term involvement, Hills For Everyone has established credibility among agencies, decision makers, and the public. When a project (like a road or a power line) is proposed that threatens the Park, Hills For Everyone engages numerous strategies (from grassroots organizing to legal remedies) to ensure parklands that have been protected in perpetuity stay protected and don't get nibbled away. We have learned that parklands are often looked at by agencies as a dumping ground for urban infrastructure like roads, utility easements, pipelines, etc. Public involvement is absolutely critical when threats arise. Among other things, we have fought off seven highways proposed through the Park, including the northern extension of the 241 Toll Road.

Bridging and Building Friends and Partners

With CHSP serving as the anchor parcel for the Puente-Chino Hills Wildlife Corridor, the effort to protect and connect the remaining wildlands requires partnering. We helped establish the Wildlife Corridor Conservation Authority composed of Whittier, La Habra Heights, Brea, and Diamond Bar, Los Angeles County, Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, and State Parks. We also helped create the Hillside Open Space Education Coalition made up of Whittier, La Habra, La Habra Heights, Brea, Rowland Heights Community Coordinating Council, and the Hacienda Heights Improvement Association. We all work to protect the Missing Middle, unprotected lands along the 57 Freeway. Some of our partners include Sierra Club, Friends of Harbors, Beaches and Parks, Friends of the Whittier Hills, Chino Hills State Park Interpretive Association, Protect Our Homes and Hills, and other neighborhood groups to keep the communication lines open. In other arenas we also work with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Board. More recently we have joined coalition like the Wildlife Corridor Working Group and the 30x30 Power In Nature Coalition. This involvement takes staff time.

Creating Funding for Land Acquisition

If permanent conservation is to occur, the key is to secure funding to buy the land. We have actively supported six park bond acts over the last four decades, worked with state legislators on both sides of the aisle to name Chino Hills State Park as a recipient of funding in budget bills. We also worked to garner funding through a lawsuit settlement, through mitigation for freeway projects, and through establishing a mitigation fund for landfill expansions. In two acquisitions for the Coal Canyon Wildlife Crossing we helped assemble 22 different sources of funds. Over $200 million of public and private funds have been invested in protecting and restoring the Puente-Chino Hills Wildlife Corridor, natural lands that are within an hour’s drive of over half the state’s population. Currently, we are finalizing conservation of 792 acres adjacent to the State Park, the last phase of a 1,591 acre acquisition. We also have our sights set on 3,000 acres in the middle of the Wildlife Corridor owned by Aera Energy LLC.