Caballero Canyon

Paul Edelman, a biologist for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, was admiring the fortitude of a cactus that had survived the recent freezes in Caballero Canyon, near the southern tip of Reseda Boulevard. Suddenly there was a rustle and a sharp thumping noise in the nearby brush. " That's a deer," he whispered, and he turned quickly to look up a canyon hillside. Sure enough, a large deer was quietly disappearing into the thick brush near the top of the hill. "He's a big one," Edelman said with a smile.

He would appear in the late afternoon, walking south through the hills toward Mulholland Drive--a man in his early 60s in street shoes, his head covered by a terry cloth cap. He carried no water, and Jill Swift of Tarzana, coming down the mountain from her afternoon hikes, was curious and concerned. "Where are you bound for?" Swift finally asked one day. Just walking home, he replied, to the other side of the mountains. His name was Chris Clegg, an Englishman who had competed as a race walker on three continents.

Not only did the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy's destruction of the natural habitat of Caballero Canyon violate state and environmental laws ("Judge Blocks Conservancy Plan to Build Public Park," June 29), the court also found that the conservancy's so-called expanded development plan violated the Santa Monica Mountains Comprehensive Plan (the "constitution" under which the conservancy exists) and the conservancy's own Mulholland Gateway Park Master Plan, its site-specific plan.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that acquires and preserves parkland, seems an unlikely target for a lawsuit by an environmental group. But the Friends of Caballero Canyon has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court in an attempt to stop the conservancy from turning nine acres of undeveloped land south of Tarzana into a public park. The land lies at the southern tip of Reseda Boulevard in a rugged, chaparral-and sage-covered area known as Reseda Ridge.

Fistfights and shoving matches erupted outside a homeowners' meeting in Encino on Thursday evening as residents who disagree over whether Reseda Boulevard should be extended clashed outside an elementary school. The scuffles, involving about 10 people, occurred before a meeting organized by the Encino Property Owners Assn. and the Encino Hillside Traffic Safety Organization.

Don't judge a trail by its trail head. We hikers need to remind ourselves of this at trail heads on the urban edge, where it's common to find trails far more inviting than their trail heads. Marvin Braude Mulholland Gateway Park, on the San Fernando Valley side of the Santa Monica Mountains above Tarzana, breaks the metropolitan trail head mold. Here the journey and the jump-off place are equally enticing.

Siding with some local residents and hikers, a judge has ordered the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to halt its $1.2-million plan to convert 17 acres of rugged, undeveloped hillside land into a grassy public park. Pending extensive environmental studies, work on the park at the southern end of Reseda Boulevard known as Reseda Ridge must stop, Superior Court Judge Frederick J. Lower Jr. ruled Wednesday. Conservancy officials say most of the improvements have been completed and will remain.

The Times printed an article July 29 ("Judge Freezes Work on Mountain Park") and a letter July 30, each of which contained inflammatory and misleading statements regarding the Big Sky Gateway Park at the southern end of Reseda Boulevard. At a board meeting of the Tarzana Property Owners Assn., it was agreed unanimously that we should declare our support for the much-maligned Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in this matter, and clarify some of the issues. This park plan, which has been ongoing for several years and has been subject to minute scrutiny during at least 10 open community hearings, will indeed provide a magnificent entrance to Topanga State Park, a wonderful access for rugged hikers into the big wild.

Bruises were bandaged and fingers of blame were pointed Friday following a fist-swinging melee between residents of Tarzana and Encino, two of the San Fernando Valley's most well-to-do communities. Carrying their quarrel into a post-fight analysis, representatives of homeowner groups and politicians who witnessed the fracas outside Lanai Road School on Thursday night agreed only that the brawl was violent and, some said, "very ugly." But they disagreed on who was to blame.

As they have every holiday season since 1900, the men and women of the Audubon Society take to the woods loaded for bird. Pencil? Check. Clipboard? Check. Binoculars? Calculator? Sibley's Guide to Birds? Check, check, check--all standard equipment in Audubon's annual Christmas Bird Count, a beak-by-beak tally that draws on the skills of about 50,000 volunteers throughout the United States, with a smattering in Canada, Latin America and the Pacific Islands.