Living Wonders of Badlands : Rugged Terrain Above Laguna Beach Is Alive With Plants, Animals

LAGUNA BEACH — “The Badlands” are anything but bad, in Fred Lang’s opinion.

The sandstone spirals that creep up the ridgeline above Laguna Beach are natural wonders that harbor valuable ecosystems, Lang claims. The nickname stems only from their resemblance to the stark, bigger-sized “badlands” in southern Utah and on the eastern slopes of the Sierras, he said.

“There are plants that live in this landscape you don’t find anywhere else in the world,” Lang said, pointing out a scraggy hybrid scrub oak that ekes out life in the dry, sandy soil and a small purple Turkish rugging, a plant now on the endangered list in the county. “These plants are absolutely right for this place and soil and climate. The mosaic they form here is unique.”

Lang, a prominent county landscape architect known best for his role in the design of UC Irvine, was elated when the county last week dedicated an eight-acre parcel of the rugged terrain in Laguna Niguel as Badlands Park. The land with 180-degree views of the coastline is crisscrossed with trails and is now a finger of Aliso and Woods Canyons Regional Park, which stretches from Laguna Niguel to Laguna Canyon.

On dedication day June 11, county supervisors credited Lang, now 77, as leader of the fight to save the parkland. To Lang, the only thing bad about the park is that there is not enough of it.

“All of this should be saved,” Lang said Thursday, gesturing to a panorama of undeveloped land next to the park, much of it owned privately. “Places like this are disappearing all along the coast.”

Lang’s sentiments are echoed by Karlin Marsh, a Silverado Canyon biologist. She recently completed an inventory of the plant and animal life along the ridgelines overlooking the coast for the city of Laguna Beach. The geology of the area reveals its history as part of a marine shelf, Marsh said.

“First of all, the parkland sits on a fault line, which is why it’s called the badlands,” she said. “It’s crazily eroding, which is what makes it so interesting geologically.”

Staring out at the Pacific and the Catalina Channel from the 780-foot-high ridgeline, it’s hard to fathom that the parkland could have once been a beach. But 10 million years ago, it was, Marsh said.

“The whole front ridge was a beach, the rest of the coastline was under water,” she explained. “The whole area stayed under water through the Ice Age, and then there was an uplift and the ocean level dropped so the old beach is now way up above the ocean. That’s why you have sand there.”

The resulting habitat of loose, sandy soil houses a unique array of plants and animals along the ridgeline, Marsh said. Animals with colorful names such as the silvery legless lizard, the rare Pacific pocket mouse, the orange-throated whiptail and the once plentiful but now depleted greater road runner can thrive in the area, she said.

“It’s an unusual habitat that offers a home to some unusual plant and animal species,” Marsh said.

The western dichondra--which, according to Marsh, is similar to the lawn dichondra, but with bigger leaves--is a plant native to Orange County that has evolved there, she said. “It was the only place in the world it is found, but now you find it in northern San Diego County.”

Human presence in the area dates back 10,000 to 14,000 years, during which Indians gathered on the rocky mesas that dot the ridgeline, according to county rangers. Lang has been visiting the area since the 1930s, when he and his wife used to rumble up the dirt roads above Laguna Beach’s Diamond Street and Three Arch Bay in their Model A Ford.

“We didn’t discover the area. The whole ridge area, which came down to Pacific Coast Highway where the South Coast Medical Center is now, was called the badlands back then,” he said.

By the early 1970s, when the residents of unincorporated South Laguna began drafting their first General Plan, the effort to save the area from development began, said Ann Christoph, a member of the early South Laguna Civic Assn. and now a member of the Laguna Beach City Council. It has never been easy to persuade people this rugged area had intrinsic value, she said.

“A lot of people thought it was a wasteland that should be developed or utilized in another way,” Christoph said. After some intense lobbying, a parcel of about three acres was donated by a developer and another five-acre piece was later purchased by the county, she said.

Christoph is among many environmentalists now hoping to save more of the adjacent territory.

“We are hoping to get another piece . . . part of the property now has open-space zoning on it,” she said.

That would delight Lang, who considers all the ridgeline precious.

“Most of us moved here because we appreciate the hills the way they are,” Lang said. “We want them left alone and made accessible to the public with trails, not chopped up and bulldozed and sold for some questionable residences.”