Wildlands of Cal Poly Pomona
In Memory
“Don’t it always seem to go
that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”
—Joni Mitchell
In the cycles of existence, regeneration surrounds us, but the stark linearity of our lives makes loss inevitable. Despite the clamor to “save the Earth”, the Earth will heal, and life will continue, no matter what we might do to it. The question instead is: Will there be a place on the healed Earth for us, and for our descendants? In this way the environmental struggle is self-interest; not “saving the Earth”, but saving our place on it.
In the larger sense, loss of natural systems imperils all of us, for we rely on the “ecosystem services” they provide. In the personal sense, loss of wildlands impoverishes each of us, as we come to inhabit a world shaped by the visions of other people, further blocked from our own deep wells of creativity.
The wildlands of Cal Poly have been taken in nibbles and gulps, and none has been returned. Remember....
The upper end of Box Canyon (the original core of the Voorhis Ecological Reserve) was once one of the wildest and most inaccessible places in Cal Poly Pomona. Except that it wasn’t really part of Cal Poly. These hidden grottos and vertical cliffs were part of the Forest Lawn–Covina Hills cemetery. For many years, by official agreement and tacit approval, the head of the canyon was part of the Ecological Reserve. Cal Poly students were occasional visitors, for research or recreation. The ridge at the top of the canyon was frequented by walkers and joggers on their way around the “backside” of Cal Poly Pomona.
Forest Lawn permitted this in part because Cal Poly supplied them with reclaimed water. Unfortunately, their primary water supplier had an exclusive contract, and after threats of a lawsuit, the agreement between Forest Lawn and Cal Poly ended. Shortly thereafter, Forest Lawn executives made the decision to “stabilize” their eastern boundary against erosion by installing a “manufactured slope” with concrete runoff channels (much as they did above J lot decades before). The head of Box Canyon was obliterated.
“Good fences make good neighbors.” At one time the boundary was largely unmarked, and not really fenced at all, but now it seems important to Forest Lawn to completely prevent ingress by people from Cal Poly. This concertina wire, reminiscent of a prison, is near the large Cal Poly water tank (seen in the background) above the Kellogg Mansion. Other parts of the fence merely have strands of barbed wire atop them, and there is no fence at all on steep slopes, but the intent is clear. The gate at the water tower was originally closed not by locks but by twisted steel reinforcing bar.
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“Would you buy a used landfill...?” Cal Poly was given the opportunity to take over the Spadra landfill, and get a lot of research money, and all for the low, low price of a couple of worthless canyons filled with the best remaining stands of southern California black walnuts in the world. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I and other biologists, none of us aware of what we were losing (it was grazing land, not easily accessible, although quite visible from Temple Ave.), bought in on the project.
The first grove to be destroyed (the southernmost, and best) disappeared into scraped dirt before any of us knew what was happening. We had some advanced warning about the second grove, and the opportunity to “take samples” a few days before it was cut. Taking samples consisted of selecting trees, which 
were then cut down by very polite and efficient men with chain saws, and “wood cookies” removed. A wood cookie is a slice of tree, crossways (what we botanists call a transverse section), 3-6 cm thick. It preserves the growth rings and some other aspects of the tree’s life for later study. I, Dr. Ron Quinn, Judi Bogdanoff-Lord, and another individual whose name I have forgotten participated in this. I think someone took pictures, and I hope to post them here someday. This picture shows walnut woodland on the north side of Temple, with the landfill on the south side in the background.
Part of our initial buy-in was based on the assumption that the landfill would be restored to something resembling natural vegetation. We never envisioned a golf course.
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It was a canyon filled with some of the finest coastal sage scrub in the San José hills, sandwiched in between Cal Poly, Forest Lawn, Mount SAC, and the Buzzard Peak natural area. Who could ever have imagined that a housing development would destroy it? Cal Poly officials who must have know that it was planned evidently turned a blind eye toward the effects it might have on campus. The effects began even before it was complete: a fire began at the edge of the development in July of 1989, and was borne on a rare south wind to consume all the coastal sage scrub on the west side. Fire is a natural part of coastal sage scrub, but as the remaining patches become more and more fenced in by development, it becomes necessary to choose the time for fire, and to prepare for it.
The development also serves as a source of weeds, an impediment to drainage (although it seems that none of the drainage problems have affected Cal Poly), and a block to movement of wildlife. Cal Poly is still part of the last remaining wildlife corridor between the San Gabriel Mountains and the Santa Ana Mountains, but it is a corridor that becomes narrower and narrower with each additional loss.
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The Society of Automotive Engineers sponsors a race for student-designed off-road vehicles called the “Mini-Baja” (here is USC’s Mini-Baja page). Currently the race is held in Texas or Arizona. I’d like to believe that they use an already-degraded off-road area.
In 1981, Cal Poly hosted the Mini-Baja, scheduled to coincide with Poly-Vue. (Remember Poly-Vue?) The sponsors chose to build the racetrack in the coastal sage scrub above J lot. Then-President Hugh O. LaBounty was unaware of the plans, although the College of Agriculture gave tacit approval. A Biology undergrad, B. Stickney, discovered the course as it was being bulldozed (and was threatened by the operators, who were evidently aware that they were doing something that was not exactly approved). He spread the word, and an impromptu coalition of students, alumni, and faculty (including yours truly, his first year on campus) organized to stop the race. We weren”t able to stop it, but we did get it relocated to a somewhat more degraded area to the south. The original bulldozer cut was revegetated within five years, and is now visible only to people who know what they are looking for, and only in places. The area where the race occurred was turned into a borrow pit; you can see some of its former hills at the base of the CLA building, and others in University Village. Parts of the pit used to fill with water in the winter, and a small wetland had grown up. More recently, the area was used for construction of a “chilling plant” that provides heat and air conditioning to several campus buildings.
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Events recounted here are based largely on memory (just like the title promised), and are to be regarded as opinion rather than fact.