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The Urban Wildlands Group

The Urban Wildlands Group is dedicated to the protection of species, habitats,
and ecological processes in urban and urbanizing areas.



Home - People - Links - Contact


LATEST NEWS

October 19, 2023 - America's Teaching at Moorpark College under the direction of
Dr. Jana Johnson has received an award from the Zoological Association of
America for "Significant Propagation and Long Term Commitment to a Single
Species" for captive rearing of the Palos Verdes blue. This program is funded by
the US Navy and US Fish and Wildlife Service through The Urban Wildlands Group. 

March 3, 2022 -- Did you know that the City of Los Angeles authorizes the
removal of a mature California walnut tree, a rare species, every single week on
average?  Our new report addresses Conservation of California Walnut in the
Eastern Santa Monica Mountains.  Click on the cover to download a pdf or
purchase a printed version through this link.   

August 2, 2020 -- New paper from UWG and Stu Weiss of Creekside Science: "Nearly
all California monarch overwintering groves require non-native trees" published
in California Fish and Wildlife.

July 22, 2019 - Our work is cited in this story on El Segundo blue butterfly
recovery. The tiny El Segundo Blue Butterfly, star of a Chevron commercial, is
making a comeback across Los Angeles.

September 25, 2018 -- Science Director Travis Longcore was interviewed on the
historical ecology of the Los Angeles River for KCET. Frogtown Without Frogs:
The Changing Ecology of the Bowtie Parcel and the L.A. River.

June 28, 2018 -- Science Director Travis Longcore was lead author on a recent
paper recieving significant media coverage:

A new tool for protecting wildlife from artificial light

Let there be light — but be mindful of the wildlife

Scientist’s new database can help protect wildlife from harmful hues of LED
lights

June 25, 2018 -- We joined conservation organziations across the country to
request an extended comment period for a proposal by the Trump administration to
fundamentally change the timeline and rights of the public to comment on
proposals under the National Environmental Policy Act.

June 6, 2018 -- Science Director Travis Longcore is quoted for his expertise on
the Los Angeles urban forest in Who will save Los Angeles' trees? from Curbed
Los Angeles.

September 25, 2017 -- UWG's work to preserve the right to trap feral cats and
take them to a shelter in the City of Los Angeles is covered in a long feature
in Los Angeles Magazine.

May 4, 2017 -- Laura Bliss from CityLab covers our research in "McMansions Are
Killing L.A.'s Urban Forest."

May 1, 2017 -- UWG's Catherine Rich and Travis Longcore are co-authors of a new
paper showing dramatic declines in urban forest cover in the residential
neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

June 23, 2016 -- We join other conservation groups, including the six local
Audubon chapters to oppose AngelFest, a proposed 3-day annual music festival in
and immediately next to the Wildlife Area in the Sepulveda Dam Basin. See
coverage in the Los Angeles Times.

June 17, 2016 -- A new atlas of artificial night sky brightness was published
and Science Director Travis Longcore was quoted on the impacts of night lighting
on wildlife in many venues, including Science Magazine, Takepart.com, Christian
Science Monitor, Scientific American, and USA Today.

July 21, 2015 -- One of the threats to Lange's metalmark is potential exposure
to dust from a nearby gypsum plant. We investigated this potential impact on
surrogate species a number of years ago and finally wrote up the results: Effect
of exposure to gypsum dust on survival of Behr's metalmark.

February 17, 2015 -- The City of Los Angeles is attempting to raise limits on
the number of owned cats at residences without a coherent plan to keep the cats
indoors as promised. Along with Endangered Habitats League, UWG submitted a
letter commenting on the proposal, and the proposal has been delayed sixty days.
Quoting the Los Angeles Times:

> Some opponents say the proposal would promote hoarding, and many find the
> enforcement system infeasible or nonexistent.
> 
> "It provides no mechanism to ensure that additional cats beyond three are kept
> indoors," said Travis Longcore, science director for the Urban Wildlands
> Group, and Dan Silver, executive director of the Endangered Habitats League.
> The pair submitted an opposition letter addressed to Koretz and other
> committee members.
> 
> “Any scheme that mixes indoor, outdoor, and indoor/outdoor cats at an address
> is clearly not meant to be enforced," Longcore and Silver wrote in their
> letter.

November 1, 2014 -- A Los Angeles Times editorial quotes our letter on synthetic
turf:

> “The city will be a lifeless and desolate place if parkways are replaced with
> artificial turf made of fossil fuels or replaced with rocks and gravel in
> place of a lawn or other living groundcover,” Travis Longcore, science
> director for the Urban Wildlands Group wrote to the city, opposing an effort
> to make it easier to install synthetic grass in public parkways.

September 30, 2014 -- We submitted a letter to the Los Angeles City Council
opposing a proposal to make it easier to install artificial turf in in the "city
strip" between the sidewalk and street. Artificial turf performs worse on a
life-cycle basis than living grass and breaks down into tiny pieces of plastic
that contaminate stormwater runoff.

September 1, 2014 -- Our Lange's Metalmark team at Moorpark College brought four
new female butterflies in from the wild at Antioch Dunes National Wildlife
Refuge to establish the next cohort in the captive breeding project.

August 5, 2014 -- The Urban Wildlands Group joins 137 conservation organizations
nationwide to petition the president to issue a proclamation commemorating the
death of the last Passenger Pigeon on September 1, 1914.

July 26, 2014 -- Science Director Travis Longcore is quoted on the recovery of
the El Segundo blue butterfly (Sacramento Bee).

April 24, 2014 -- Alternet reports on the health impacts of artificial night
lighting, including an interview with Science Director Travis Longcore.

February 17, 2014 -- UWG submits comments with the City of Los Angeles on the
adverse effects of poor tree trimming practices by contractors to the City. The
letter points out that the City of Los Angeles does not have a goal for tree
canopy coverage and has in fact lost tree canopy over the past decade.

December 12, 2013 -- A big restoration project is underway at the Antioch Dunes
National Wildlife Refuge, with a new sand dune being constructed from scratch.
Butterflies from our captive breeding program will likely be released here when
the plants are mature.

October 17, 2013 -- UWG's comments critical of the City of Los Angeles' proposed
Citywide Cat Program, which would allow unlimited unowned (stray/feral) cats to
be fed outdoors and would remove the right of property owners or land managers
to remove unowned cats, are reported in the UK's Daily Mail. See also local
coverage in the Daily Breeze.

October 3, 2013 -- UWG joins 70 other organizations to urge the California
Department of Pesticide Regulation to take further steps to protect people,
pets, and wildlife from second generation anticoagulant poisons.

September 20, 2013 -- Mt. Charleston blue butterfly, which UWG petitioned to
list as endangered in 2005, has finally been listed as an endangered species by
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, thanks to the legal action of the Center for
Biological Diversity. Here is our original petition to list.

July 15, 2013 -- UWG has completed an assessment of the potential recovery
strategies for the federally endangered Miami Blue Butterfly for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service. Based on interviews with species experts, their rankings
for species recovery actions are: 1) research on species ecology, 2)
reintroduction to expand occupied range, 3) monitoring of existing populations,
4) re-establish a captive colony as a refugium, and 5) improve agency
coordination.

> Longcore, T. 2013. Assessment of recovery strategies for the Miami Blue
> Butterfly (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Agreement No. F12AP00812). The Urban
> Wildlands Group, Los Angeles, 44 pp.

July 5, 2013 -- Paul Bogard's new book The End of Night: Searching for Darkness
in the Age of Artificial Light is a sprawling travelogue/exploration of night,
lighting, and its effects on nature and society. The work of The Urban Wildlands
Group features prominently in the chapter on ecology, including both the book
Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting and research on towerkill
of birds.

July 4, 2013 - Science Director Travis Longcore was quoted by the LA Weekly in
two pieces reporting on a controversial proposal to place a combination visitor
center/animal adoption center in Area C of the the state-owned Ballona Wetlands
Ecological Reserve. The articles are "Annenberg Foundation Can't Grasp Disgust
Over Its Wetlands 'Interpretive Center' and Dog Pound" and "Wallis Annenberg's
Controversial Visitor Center at Ballona Wetlands: Money Matters."

May 2013 -- Read about the plight of Lange's metalmark and the people working to
save it in Jon Mooallem's new book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly
Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America. Includes
Jana Johnson and The Butterfly Project crew, Ken Osborne, and Travis Longcore
and Catherine Rich's essay "Invertebrate Conservation at the Gates of Hell."



March 2013 -- Earth Island Journal has a short article quoting UWG research on
night lighting, including on avian mortality. Read "And Incredibly Bright" by
Holly Haworth.

February 11, 2013 -- UWG's work on feral cat issues was featured in an
investigative report by KCET's SoCal Connected, "L.A.'s Proposed No-Kill Policy
Raises Hackles on Both Sides." Science Director Travis Longcore's quote in the
piece was meant to communicate that there is in truth no such thing as a feral
cat policy that is "no kill." If cats are left out in the environment, then
birds and other wildlife will be killed by them. This view was articulated in
his invited op-ed for the newsletter of the American Bird Conservancy, Bird
Calls. Read the October 2012 essay, No-Kill Movement Means Death for Birds.

 

Older news...

 


PROJECTS

Ecological Consequences of
Artificial Night Lighting

Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting (Island Press), edited by
Catherine Rich and Travis Longcore



See reviews in Science, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Biological
Conservation, The Auk, The Condor, and Northeastern Naturalist.

VIDEO: Lights Out! For Nature

"Ecological Light Pollution" in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

Conference Information

Vincent Thomas Bridge, San Pedro

Habitat Protection and Restoration

Ballona Wetlands Biota and Historical Ecology Resources

Vision for El Segundo dunes at LAX

Successful Opposition to Waterview Street Landscaping Project at LAX

Beach Bluffs Restoration Project

Ecological Effects of Fuel Modification (Fire Clearance)

Spiraling Roots (collaborative project on phytoremediation of urban soils with
native plants; report)

Urban Forestry

Urban Oaks

UCLA's Campus Forest: A Community Resource

Increased home size and hardscape decreases urban forest cover in Los Angeles
County’s single-family residential neighborhoods

Western Snowy Plover

Status and Trends in Recovery Unit 5

www.westernsnowyplover.org

Butterflies and Moths

Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly

El Segundo Blue Butterfly

Lange's Metalmark Butterfly

Laguna Mountain Skipper

Miami Blue Butterfly

Quino Checkerspot Butterfly

Callippe Silverspot Butterfly

Santa Monica Mountains Hairstreak

Kern Primrose Sphinx Moth

INCA (INsect Count Analyzer for transect counts)

Humane Considerations in Wildlife Management

Lake Skinner Beavers

Resolving Wildlife Conflicts