Photo Feature

In our regular Photo Features, we focus on key AOTE projects, reporting from the field on the challenges affecting the survival of wildlife and habitats, and revealing the complex and extraordinary world of nature as seen through photographers' lenses.

Santa Clara River

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The Santa Clara river is one of America’s ten most endangered rivers, an archaeologically important site providing rare habitat to many threatened and endangered species of wildlife and plant life.

It flows approximately 116-miles from its headwaters near Acton, California, to the Pacific Ocean, and is one of only two remaining natural river systems in southern California. Flowing east to west through a beautiful valley, formed between the Santa Susana Mountains and the Transverse Ranges, the river crosses many different land types.

Threats to the ecological health of the river include urban development, channelization, oil spills, stormwater run-off pollution, and the possible resumption of large-scale aggregate mining in the channel. The river supports a great variety of flora and fauna and extensive patches of high-quality riparian habitat, totaling over 4,000 acres, are present along its entire length.

To monetize every inch of their holdings, housing developers in Valencia have already re-channeled sections of southern California’s last major wild river by placing it in a parabolic choke of concrete. This slaughterous action has resulted in an unnatural increase of water flow, mutilation of this vital water source and habitat destruction of endangered and threatened species.

If immediate conservation-minded measures are not enacted and a comprehensive program to address proper management of population growth is not initiated, expansive areas of land will be transformed from their current natural settings to an urban one. Additional buffer zones around this river will degrade and more of southern Claifornia’s last riparian and freshwater habitats for wildlife will disappear.

To raise awareness of the plight of the Santa Clara river on a national and international level, as part of a multi-photographer team, AOTE President Leo Grillo has been conducting a survey of its landscape.